Capitol Architect Mike Rindone rests on The Sower on top of the Nebraska State Capitol while getting another close look at the 70-year old sculpture. Rindone, a 1974 UNL grad, is in charge of the Capitol Masonry Restoration Project, which included a close up examination and repair of the statue.

Face to Face with Lee Lawrie's The Sower

UNL Grad Oversees Restoration of State's Tallest Citizen

By Richard Wright, Public Relations

Only birds and a green man have a better view of Lincoln. Standing atop the State Capitol, more than 400 feet above ground, Mike Rindone says he has a job that far exceeded his dreams when he was an architecture student at UNL in the 1970s.

Rindone can look down on his work from the Capitol dome and see what needs to be repaired, cleaned or refurbished. He is the masonry project manager for the Nebraska Capitol Masonry Restoration project. The project entails restoring the interior and exterior masonry on the entire Capitol tower. It should be completed in 2007.

Rindone spent 15 years working as a state historical preservation officer prior to his current position as Capitol Architect. Managing the resoration project has exceeded even his own expectations.

"I never dreamed I would ever be associated with this type of project," he said."Who knows what aspirations you have in college? I just wanted to get a job and make a living for me and my family."

Rindone has had to help identify problems with the building so contractors could restore, reinforce and, replace different materials on each floor. There are a lot of problems, but Rindone does not fault the original contractors who built the Capitol from 1922 to 1932.

"They did a great job with materials and plans they had," he said. "There were just some misconceptions the early designers had on how the building would perform over time."

Some of those misconceptions concern the stress relief joints throughout the building. They haven't performed as expected because mortar used 70 years ago was inadequate. That mortar is what workers are today replacing.

As part of the restoration project, contractors will remove organic growth that has found its way onto the building. The workers relieve stresses in the tower masonry façade by removing stone and brick and reinforcing the shelf angles to support the exterior walls and help the stress-relieving joints. They also will repair and waterproof the gold tile dome, which includes restoring the expansion joints and regrouting the gold ceramic tiles.

Because the Capitol is a National Historic Landmark, builders try to reuse materials rather than replace them. So far workers have completed work from the 7th floor to the 12th floor all the way around the building.

But what people have been talking about since April was the work being done to the Sower, the statue that tops the 400-foot tower.

Hoisted in place in 1930, the Sower hadn't been closely examined, cleaned or repaired since. Restoring the Sower was not part of the original restoration plan, according to Rindone. With the help of a $30,000 Save Outdoor Sculpture grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and Target Stores, work on the Sower was allowed.

The 19-foot-tall statue was in surprisingly excellent condition, Rindone said. There were some dents on the Sower from lightning strikes, but the metal used to make the statue was very self healing so that the divots actually looked like scars, and there were no real big holes. When struck by lightning, the copper melts and refills the hole, bonding itself.

The Sower's sculptor, Lee Lawrie, coated the statue in beeswax. Over time the wax eroded away leaving parts of the statue open to oxidation. The Sower was three different colors: bronze, black and green.

Workers leveled out the patina covering the statue. Rindone said he hoped the the material would slow or stop corrosion, evem out the patina's texture and unify the statue's color.

Work on the Sower was completed last week and the scaffolding removed. Rindone expects the statue to last indefinitely.

"It's going to last at least 100 years," he said. "Maybe my grandkids might work on it then."

Rindone has climbed the scaffolding to face the Sower eye to eye more than 50 times. He says the statue is ominous looking.

"His eyes rivet right through you," he said. "His face is so dynamic. It's imposing. It's like he's watching you like a cat watching you walk by."

The people of Nebraska should be proud of the effort by the legislature and the people who put forth the money to work on the Sower, Rindone said. They are just as important as the people who built the Capitol.

"It takes guts to do that, especially in these times," he said.

Rindone said it will be a bittersweet moment when the scaffolding encasing the grand old man is removed.

"I'll wish I could go back up and pat him on the head," he said. "I'll miss gazing on how well he's been made. I'll miss it."

A former military meteorologist, CHUCK VAN ROSSUM now guides students, not pilots.

Van Rossum Adapts to Life's Challenges

By Scott Franzen, PR Intern

Anticipation is rising in Canfield Administration Building about the new elevator being installed this summer. One who is eager to us the new elevator is Chuck van Rossum. An assistant director of the Minority Assistance Program, he hasn't been able to visit his office in Multi-Cultural Affairs on the second floor of the north side of the building for some time due to health restrictions.

Along with his MCA responsibilities, van Rossum is also special assistant to the vice chancellor of student affairs; he conducts all of his business from the student affairs office on the first floor.

Two years ago, he thought he was suffering from bronchitis. Instead, his symptoms were diagnosed as a serious heart infection that has left him with decreased stamina. The four flights of stairs to the MCA office restricted him to the first floor.

But adapting to changing environments is nothing new for van Rossum, whose globe-trotting childhood and military career prepared him to be flexible.

Born in Indonesia, raised in Holland and Boston, van Rossum brings a global perspective to his responsibilities. Moving from country to country as a child and while serving in the Air Force gave him taste for the excitement of building anew in different place and trying new things, he said.

"You have to make the most of a finite time in a place," van Rossum said.

Van Rossum began his career as a meteorologist in the Air Force, briefing air crews on travel routes. The weather is not always predictable, and that taught him the value of doing your job to the best of your ability, he said.

His work relied on the honesty, credibility and integrity of his decisions because the safety of the aircrews depended on him, he said. van Rossum added that his work also made it easy for him to work one-on-one, a characteristic that now helps him work with students.

"To see students do something that they only dreamed of, means a lot," he said. He enjoys the daily contact with students, because it gives him the opportunity to make a difference, he said. "Whether it is offering a simple word of encouragement or passing on names for help."

"The last two years have been a challenge health wise," van Rossum said, "but you make the most of what you are given. There is more of urgency in what you do, everyday I work on giving more of myself to the students. It is important for someone in the university to remember what university work is all aboutæbeing role models and teachers for the students."

Working for the military was more about daily output and had a more defined organizational structure as opposed to university work, he said. Concentrating on the process of preparing for the future and organizational structures that are more blurred creates a more exciting and refreshing environment, van Rossum said.

He got interested in higher education as a sociology graduate student and teaching assistant for a couple of sociology classes at UNO. Still in the Air Force at the time, he jumped at the chance to teach ROTC courses at Southern Illinois University from 1984-1987. He received his master's degree in 1990 and resigned from the military in 1991 with a captain's commission.

He was the coordinator for Student Development in the Freshman Experience Program at Southern Illinois University for three years before leaving in 1997 to come to UNL. His duties also included being in charge of the transitional experience office (where students went to drop some or all their classes) for five years.

Van Rossum credits a call from Rosemary Blum, UNL's director of student judicial affairs, as important in luring him to Nebraska. She called him 1997 about an open position for an assistant director in UNL's Multi-Cultural Affairs office. Blum was a graduate student assistant at Southern Illinois for van Rossum for two years. She went on to become his assistant coordinator and then moved to Nebraska in 1996.

Reviews Positive on Pearl Harbor Science

Researchers Analyzing USS Arizona for Metal Corrosion, Failure

By Kelly Bartling, Public Relations

Researchers studying the USS Arizona anticipate the May 25 release of the movie Pearl Harbor will renew interest in the future of the sunken battleship.

Now a tomb for sailors who perished Dec. 7, 1941, the USS Arizona is encrusted with layers of sea deposits and is corroding, leaking oil into Pearl Harbor. Now, 60 years after the vessel's sinking, UNL metallurgical engineers are helping predict the remaining life of the battleship wreckage.

Professor emeritus Donald L. Johnson, associate professor William N. Weins and research specialist John D. Makinson, all in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UNL, are in their second year of a research project to help determine the condition of the USS Arizona.

"Anytime you have a movie like this that reconnects generations with history, I think you have a renewed or refreshed interest," said Makinson. "You have a lot of younger people who don't know what Pearl Harbor is or what it stands for, and what importance memorials like the Arizona have. I think the movie will generate interest in the memorial and our research."

Makinson is one of several divers who has ventured to the Arizona to recover metal samples and determine the stability and longevity of the wreckage. Divers find that thick layers of concretion or biofoul have acted as a barrier to metal corrosion. By accurately pinpointing the ship's metal content, the scientists will determine how much the metal has corroded during the last 60 years and identify the ship's weakest points. With that information, they will work with structural analysts to determine the future stability of the wreckage.

The Arizona was one of six ships destroyed during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Struck by four lethal 1,800 pound bombs, the ship's forward magazine exploded. Casualties aboard the warship numbered 1,177; many sailors remain entombed in the sunken ship. Efforts to raise the ship failed. On Memorial Day in 1962 the USS Arizona War Memorial and Pearl Harbor Historic Landmark was dedicated. It has since become a popular tourist site.

"The most important issue we've come up with so far is that the concretion or biofoul on the surface of the ship is protective and that the rate of corrosion appears to be very dependent on the biofoul or the concretion, and that concretion acts as a barrier," Johnson said. "The 'biofoul' consists of calcium carbonate, barnacles, mollusks and other deposits that have excreted onto the surface. That concretion varies across the surface."

Because the biofoul is acting as a protectant, the researchers have been interested in how and why the amount of material varies. They will be comparing the USS Arizona biofoul and metallurgy to those of the USS Missouri, which was recently moved to the harbor, and that of the submarine USS Bowfin, now also a floating museum.

Since initial salvage efforts in 1942, little research or observation on the Arizona had been done until an expedition in 1983 of the Submerged Cultural Resources Unit for the National Park. The UNL metal engineers are advising the park service, the U.S. Navy, and memorial staff.

Weins and Makinson became dive-certified and have accompanied divers on numerous inspections of the ship. Makinson and Johnson will return to Pearl Harbor June 17-29 for additional dives. The recent resurgence in publicity about Pearl Harbor because of the movie, a National Geographic magazine article and a National Geographic Explorer documentary has prompted additional interest in their research, which also could shed light on the expectations for other sunken vessels.

"There doesn't seem to be any immediate danger that it will break up or collapse," Weins said. When it does, thousands of tons of fuel which have remained onboard the sunken vessel, and have been leaking at a rate of a quart per day, could be released.

"We just don't have enough information at this point to put a handle on how long it will last. Is it 10 years? Is it 20 years? 200? That's one thing they're interested in getting a jump on." Weins said. "There is conflicting information about the thickness of the steel at various locations, and there are only theories on how much fuel remains on board, but it could be as much as 1 million gallons."

"None of what they find out will be bad news because we know one day, the ship will not be there. That is the course of nature. But the memories will always be there," said Kathy Billings, memorial director at Pearl Harbor. "The life of the ship is one of the number of questions we get frequently from visitors, as is what effect a catastrophic release of oil on board the ship would have to this harbor. We are grateful this Nebraska team showed up and offered to help. They have the expertise we have been needing."