Collegiate Times

The most well-known Hokie to take up residence in Cassell Coliseum in the last 40 years doesn't have a jersey hanging in the gym. He's standing right out front.

The guard of Cassell Coliseum, the Hokie Bird, stands 10 feet tall and weighs exactly one ton. Behind all the bronze brawn, however, lies a much slighter sculptor.

Artist Judith Damon, a sculptor of 20 years, was contracted to build the Hokie Bird statue. It was commissioned in the fall of 1964 and was brought to the coliseum the fall of the following year.

The process that hatched the Hokie spanned two continents and tremendous amount of manpower. Damon began with a quarter-scale model.

A small-scale model allowed Damon to practice and to get the attitude of the full-scale model correct.

You don't want to finish a big Hokie Bird and have it be wrong, said Damon.

The process was long. First, an armature, which held the clay mold, was fabricated. The armature actually took a trip to the rival city of Charlottesville.

?It felt kind of funny driving that Hokie Bird through the streets of Charlottesville,? said Damon. ?I was hoping no one would see what I had in the back seat.?

After the modeling was finished, Damon had foundry workers from the Czech Republic come to the U.S. to do the actual molding of the bird.

?We use the foundry, because I had done a previous sculpture with them, and I knew that they would give us the best rate,? Damon said. ?It's very expensive to do a large piece like this.?

The molds were done in sections and coated first with liquid rubber, then with plaster. This prepared them for the trip to the Czech Republic.

For several months, the bird resided at the foundry north of Prague, near the Polish border. Putting hot wax into the molds, foundry workers then covered it with a ceramic slurry. Once the slurry reached the requisite thickness, hot bronze was poured into the layers between the ceramic.

?This is why it's called the lost wax process,? Damon said. ?The wax melts and the bronze fills the space between the ceramic layers. Every little detail is picked up by the bronze. It's kind of like a giant chocolate Hokie Bird.?

This labor-intensive process is still done today. ?I love the fact that doing a bronze is still done the way the Greeks did it,? Damon said.

Finally, the bronze sections have to be welded together to be complete. It wasn't beautiful from the start, however. When the bronze comes out of the furnace, it looks ?like it has a disease,? Damon said.

The foundry workers then used chemicals to put on the patina with a blowtorch. The bird was then buffed, waxed, and ready to be flown to Dulles International Airport.

Damon was not at Cassell when the Hokie Bird arrived. But Alvin Williams, a 33-year physical plant employee at Tech, was.

?Well, it was a lot of work involved in the process,? Williams said. ?We had to get it through the doors, scalpel it out in the ceiling and get anchors to hold it where it was supposed to be.

It took one week and seven workers to get the Hokie Bird where it rests today.

Retired communication professor and friend of Damon, Ed Ewing, said, ?I think it's a marvelous symbol. Something about the character of the Hokie Bird reminds me of students in classes.?

The Hokie Bird project immersed Damon in Tech culture.

?Quite honestly, I was never a great football spectator. I never sat down and watched a football game from beginning to end. But being exposed to the Hokie nation with all these grown men coming in and bowing to the Hokie Bird as they walked in the door, I became more involved,? she said.

She admits that she is now committed to the football scene and is even spreading out to basketball.

Although the Hokie Bird was designed for Lane Stadium, the overall message of the sculpture was essentially the same for Cassell.

?He's got to have the look,? Damon said. ?The look meaning, 'Don't mess with us. If you come to Tech, you better be ready. Don't mess around.' That's the attitude and the key thing that I hope to get through with it.?