When the epic rain storm let up at Mount Rushmore we headed back to our car only to find out I had left my car window open and my seat was soaking. I opened Woodstock to get a small tarp out and some towels and saw that we got some moisture in the trailer too! Sleeping in a damp trailer isn't fun so I was hoping the sun would come out at the next campsite and we could dry things out. So with tarp and towels, I got seated in the car and we were off to the Crazy Horse Memorial. The head is done after 30 years of blasting and chiseling on Thunderhead Mountain. Started in 1948 by sculptor Korczak Kiolkowski on private land in Cuter county South Dakota, It depicts Crazy Horse, an Oglala Lakota warrior, riding a horse and pointing into the distance. Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota elder, commissioned the memorial because he wanted the world to know that American Indians have great heroes too. One of Kiolkowski's smartest moves was to marry Ruth Ross. She arrived at the Crazy Horse Memorial as a volunteer in 1948. What she ended up with was much more! Ziolkowski and Ross married on November 23, 1950. He was 42 years old and she was 24. They had ten children who were born in the small cabin where the family lived. Together Ruth and her husband compiled three books of material containing measurements and plans for the statue. From the family cabin she handled the finances, bookkeeping, press inquiries, staffed their visitors center and acquired the equipment and materials needed to carve the sculpture. Oh yes, she did all this while Korczak was blasting away at the mountain and she was watching their ten children. What a woman! I meet some folks yesterday that went to the memorial thirty years ago when it all started. I couldn't tell them Crazy Horse was finished but I could report that the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation has funded and built the Indian Museum of North America, and the Native American Cultural Center. Kiolkowski, whose personal motto was, "Never forget your dreams." Ruth's was, "Dreams do come true." They would both be proud to know that the dream is still alive and well.
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