Sculptor Paul Michaels, second from left, listens to Local 23 longshoremen Jim Norton, left, Bill Connolly, center, and Ronald Magden, right, on what they’d like to see changed in the clay statue of Harry Bridges. One of the primary financial backers of the Bridges project — Emil Korjan, a former ILWU member who died at 92 — had said he wanted the statue to be placed ”where students mingle.”
In life, Harry Bridges stood 5 feet 6.
In bronze, he’ll hit 6 feet 4.
Bridges, revered by the West Coast dockworkers as founder of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, is the subject of a statue being sculpted by Key Peninsula artist Paul Michaels.
“People forget what the past has done for them,” said Tacoma maritime historian Ron Magden at a recent preview of a clay model of the Bridges sculpture.
People might forget, but longshore workers do not.
There’s a Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies at the University of Washington Seattle, and there’s a Harry Bridges Boulevard near the Port of Los Angeles.
Soon, there will be a statue in Tacoma.