Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
SYRACUSE -ÊChief Wawasee has returned to his post in Crossen Mill Park, restored.
For the past four or five years, the statue of Chief Wawasee was hidden from the public, in storage in a public works department garage.
The Indian statue was donated to a local Syracuse group approximately 50 years ago by W.E. Long. Chief Wawasee once stood at a cigar store in Chicago.
He was restored on a previous occasion but the paint job wasn't considered very good. An arm was broken and his nose fell off. Chief Wawasee ended up in two separate halves.
A few months ago, after reading an article in a local newspaper, Jack English volunteered to restore the statue. He spent three weeks working on the structure and 1-1/2 weeks repainting it.
"It came out real good simply because I took my time," English said of the finished statue.
Ace Hardware, Syracuse, furnished the paint. It took several attempts at mixing the primary colors for English to get the right skin tone, he said.
Members of the Public Works Department who helped transport Chief Wawasee from the garage to Crossen Mill Park included Jeremy Caudill, Gerald Wolfe, James Funderburg, Butch Robinson and Paul Hoffman. Hoffman drove the backhoe that lifted Chief Wawasee from the ground to the pickup truck and from the truck to his post.
