Front Page News:
May 18, 2011
Old Man
Of The Mountain Profilers Installed
Eight years and one week after New Hampshire’s beloved Old Man of
the Mountain collapsed, a series of profilers that will allow
visitors to see the granite icon on the hillside where he had
perched were installed on Monday, May 11.
“This is a big day, an historic day,” said Dick Hamilton,
president of the Old Man of the Mountain Legacy Fund, which has
worked for the past 8 years to develop a fitting memorial to New
Hampshire’s state symbol. “I am absolutely thrilled, overjoyed. I
can’t tell you how fabulous this is.”
The profilers, stainless rods fitting with what appear to be
bumps on the metal, recreate the visage of the Old Man of the
Mountain when visitors stand in a certain place and line those bumps
in the correct position.
“The whole objective is to recreate the experience,” said sculptor
Ron Magers of Essex, Mass., who won a national contest sponsored by
the Old Man of the Mountain Legacy Fund in its search for a way for
Granite Staters to remember the iconic profile. “It’s not a monument
you just look at, it’s something where you actually have be in the
right place to see, just as you had to be in the right place to see
the Old Man.”
The installation of the profilers is part of the first phase of
the monument project. Next week, crews will begin to lay the first
of over 200 engraved granite pavers, which people from all over the
country have purchased in the past year. Money raised from the sale
has helped to fund the memorial. Pavers are still available and
orders received by May 20 will be laid in time for next month’s
dedication of the project.
“There has not been one dime of taxpayers’ money that has gone
into this project,” Hamilton said.
The Old Man of the Mountain Profile Plaza will be dedicated at
noon on June 12. On that day, police, firefighters and veterans from
around New England will take part in the Watch Over Us motorcycle
ride from Laconia to North Conway, which will include a stop at the
Old Man for the dedication.
Presentation of the 7th annual Profile Awards will follow at 2
p.m., at the Peabody Lodge, Cannon Mountain.
For more information about the Old Man of the Mountain Legacy
Fund and its monument project, go to
www.NHOldMan.org.
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