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46 As the sun came up over Little Round Top at Gettysburg, Ludtke and his good friend Jim Reynolds drank coffee and thought about how they were viewing the same sunrise the Confederate cavalry must have seen as they were riding up the slopes of Devil’s Den in July 1863. On this mostly clear morning, with only a little fog on the ground, the two men wondered what it must have been like on that very spot 130 years ago, when fifty thousand men lost their lives in three days on this battlefield. Ludtke not only thought about the battle and its historical significance but also reflected on the circumstances that had brought him to this very place—sitting on a hill at Gettysburg, watching the sun come up and knowing that one of his sculptures would stand forever on this hallowed ground. One morning in his studio in Houston, Ludtke had received a call from a man in Baltimore, Maryland, informing him that a competition was going to be held to create a sculpture for the Gettysburg battlefield that would be a memorial to Maryland soldiers. Citizens for a Maryland Monument at Gettysburg was a group of prominent Marylanders, including even the governor himself, William D. Schaefer, who recognized that their state did not have an official memorial at Gettysburg.1 This representative informed Ludtke that the group had narrowed its search to four sculptors and wondered if he would like to be considered as an alternate candidate. The group had seen his work and received his name from the National Sculpture Society. Ludtke never hesitated . He said, “You bet your life. I would do anything to have the opportunity Brothers Again , Brothers Again 47 to do a piece of work on America’s most hallowed battlefield, Gettysburg.” However, Ludtke did not hear anything about the project for a while, but he held out hope, as he had many times before with other commissions. Erika cautioned him not to get his hopes up, but “if it had been a chance that was a thousand to one, I don’t care—I would have taken it,” he said. A few months later, a gentleman called to say that one of the finalists under consideration had dropped out, and he wondered if Ludtke would create a model and send it up to the judging panel. He immediately said he would, then dropped everything and began work on a clay model. Unbeknown to Erika, he already had been reading everything he could about Maryland and its involvement in the Civil War. He researched its history as a border state and learned that boys from Maryland fought on both sides in the war. Per the committee ’s instruction, the sculpture was to consist of two figures. Ludtke decided to create an emotional piece that consisted of two men, one Union soldier and one Confederate soldier, both “emerging from the chaos of the rubble strewn battlefield in a search for shelter from the turmoil around them,” as he wrote in his proposal to the committee. The Confederate soldier holds his torn left leg in a tight grip, “grimacing in pain, looking out for respite.” The Union soldier, although his right arm appears to be bandaged and useless, is helping support the wounded Confederate soldier by gripping his belt with his left hand. The Confederate soldier has his hand gently placed on his enemy’s back. Neither is shown with their weapons in hand nor being dominant over the other. They are on the same plane and symbolically placed shoulder to shoulder, both looking out, away from the battlefield. Both have a lost look on their faces, as if to ask, “Where do we go from here?” For Ludtke, that summed up the major point of Gettysburg, as this battle became the turning point for the war and preservation of the nation. To show enemies arm in arm trying to get out of this battle carried a much deeper meaning.2 Ludtke took the clay model to Maryland, and the judges for the competition , which included the dean of Maryland sculptors, Reuben Kramer, as well as two other sculptors, all chose Larry. He was officially awarded the commission in March 1993. O. James “Jim” Lighthizer, president of the Civil War Preservation Trust in Washington, DC, and Maryland’s secretary of transportation at the time, was very impressed with the sculptor’s dramatic representation of the [18.117.183.150] Project MUSE (2024-04-24...

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