 Welcome to Portland Public Art Committee's program Art in Our Front Yard. Today we're delighted to have Herb Adams, a Portland historian, professor, and politician speaking about the Maine Lobsterman. This is the Maine Lobsterman. His story goes from Beirut to Bailey's Island, from Cundy's Harbor to Casablanca, and then back home again here. And it's a tale of three people, the sculptor, the subject, and the statue. Now, first the sculptor. Victor Cahill, the sculptor, was born in Beirut and emigrated to the United States at age 14, where in here he joined his brother Joseph in Maine, where the Cahill brothers would be fixtures of the down east art scene for decades. Joseph is a painter, Victor, as a sculptor. Victor studied at Westbrook Seminary, today's Portland campus of UNE, and the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Victor was a born Bon vivant. Victor lived the good life on both sides of the Atlantic. Victor served in the United States Army in World War I and stayed in France after the war to study art and to go crazy over airplanes. Victor may have been the only manor to actually greet Charles Lindbergh in Paris in 1927 after his solo flight across the Atlantic. Victor became president of Portland's Forest City Flying Club in 1930 and flew on to fame as a sculptor of portrait busts and bust reliefs. Come 1939 and the great New York World's Fair, Portland lawyer Nathan Thompson started a drive to send a really Maine sculpture to the great Maine pavilion at the fair. This sculpture, the original cost was $10,000 for a big bronze. It'd be over $160,000 today. But in mid-depression Maine, only $1,500 had been raised by April 1939 and the fair was on, so the statue was never cast in metal. And Cahill's plaster model of the Lobsterman painted bronze, went to the World's Fair, and there millions saw it. Millions loved it, and they loved it because of the subject. This is a real person. His name was Elroy Johnson of Bailey Island, Casco Bay, Maine, a real Lobsterman, and it is a really good likeness. He posed patiently, if a little puzzled about them New York fellers, but under Cahill's skilled hands, he became a Maine immortal. He sits on a coil of rope, the lead line down to his traps. He's snug in his high boots. He's cast his cap aside, and he's doing what he did every day of his working life. Kids ask, why is the man shaking hands with a lobster? Well, I don't think Mr. Johnson ever was on a first name basis with any lobster. Their relationship was purely professional. But what he's actually doing is pegging the lead claw of the lobster with a wooden peg so that the claw can't close, just like you drive a pencil into a nutcracker to keep from being pinched. Today, Lobstermen use rubber bands. In 1941, after the World's Fair was over, the statue was returned to Portland and was exhibited in the old Columbia Hotel, now 643 Congress Street, and in the curve of the stairs at Portland City Hall. Thousands more saw it. Thousands loved it, and thousands touched it. And eventually, vandals broke the fingers of Mr. Johnson and the legs of the lobster. And finally, the statue, chipped and broken and neglected, was sent to a Maine Department of Marine Resources warehouse in Booth Bay, and it was forgotten. And in May, 1941, just when the statue was arriving back in Maine, Victor Cahill left Maine and off to what a life. During World War II, Sculptor Cahill ran the gigantic nightclub. The Palas de la Brière in France, 8,000 GI meals were served today dancing and music from 11 in the morning to 1 a.m. the next morning, beer at 8 cents a glass. GI is heaven. And then on to Casablanca. Yes, Casablanca, North Africa. Shades of Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. As a major in the United States Army, Cahill spoke seven different languages, five of them Arabic, and he was a guide to Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt when they came to North Africa. He had his fingers in many mysterious pies in Morocco, not the least of which was Cahill's famous nightclub, the Red Fez, Plush Exotic, the Crossroads of the Desert. And legends still linger about Cahill's doings with certain secret agencies of the United States government and the allies in those years. Oh, play it again, Sam. Well, Sculptor Cahill died in San Francisco in 1965 at age 70. Elroy Johnson died in September 1973 in Bailey Island, Maine. Folks were said that his sculpture was a waste in an warehouse, and the Maine legislature at last appropriated the money to cast it in bronze. In fact, three of him in bronze. Sculptor Norman Tarion of East Booth Bay cast the bronze from the fragile plaster original via the lost wax process. And 17 separate pieces were united and welded together to make the bronze lobstermen, which we see today, each copy of which weighs 800 pounds. One lobsterman stands today on Main Avenue in Washington, DC. One stands right here in Portland, Maine, in the middle of Maine's largest city, erected here in 1977. And one stands at Land's End, Bailey Island, Maine, past which point Elroy Johnson set out to see every day of his working life. Mr. Johnson and Mr. Cahill never met again. In fact, Mr. Johnson never got to the New York World's Fair at all. He was a working lobsterman all his life. In his later years, a reporter asked him about posing for this statue. And he replied in classic Maine way, well, it was interesting, and it was different. And he never did it again. But it didn't bother him. And if it made others happy, well, he thought it was all right. So here he sits. And it is all right. So here's to Victor Cahill, sculptor and bon vivant. And here's to Elroy Johnson, good lobsterman, great statue, but best of all, a real manor. Now who could ask for more? Well, maybe seconds on lobster. What I'm going to do here as part of the narration is to indicate that he's not shaking hands with a lobster, however nice the crustacean might have been. What he's doing is pegging the lobster to prevent the claws from closing, like you drive a pencil or a pen between the claws of a nutcracker to prevent from being pinched. Today, of course, lobstermen would use a rubber band. The last winter, a couple of winter goes, somebody put a knit hat on him. They were very thoughtful and it stayed up for a long time. I mean, people were nice to him. I like that.