Scout statue may be finished 76 years later

BARRE, Vt. — The Vermont city defined by the stone pulled from within its surrounding hills is hoping to use that granite to commission a piece of art conceived more than seven decades ago honoring one of the nation’s first Boy Scout troops.

A local Boy Scout historian is leading the effort in Barre, a city known as “the granite center of the world,” to complete the project — a granite statue of a scout carrying a person on his shoulders. The original project ceased following the 1941 death of Italian-born artist Carlo Abate, who helped train generations of Barre artists.

The Boy Scout sculpture would join three existing works of art that commemorate the city’s heritage as a granite center made famous by its immigrants.

“We’ve erected monuments throughout America and even the world and we only have three within the city,” said Steve Restelli, a Barre native and former Boy Scout.

On the north side of Barre sits a 1985 statute of the same Abate who was working on a model of what was to have become the Boy Scout statue at the time of his death. At the city’s main park sits the 1924 statue known as “Youth Triumphant,” a kneeling warrior, which became part of the Barre city seal. There is also a statue of Robert Burns, erected by Scottish immigrants.

Restelli is leading a committee seeking to raise the money for the Boy Scout statue, which will be carved out of the area’s signature gray granite by local artist Giuliano Cecchinelli II.