Second Willis Avenue sculpture sees light Saturday night

Another spiritual gift from the Art on the Prairie Committee saw the light Saturday night when the sculpture honoring notable Perry benefactor Roberta Green Ahmanson was dedicated.

Perry Mayor Jay Pattee welcomed about 50 people to the ceremony and spoke warmly of the gratitude due the Ahmansons, who gave Perry “a shot in the arm” with their investment in the 1990s of $10 million to $20 million in some half-a-dozen downtown buildings, including the Hotel Pattee, the Carnegie Library Museum, the Security Bank Building and the Center for Towncraft.

The Ahmansons’ restoration projects sparked “a mini renaissance” in the town center, Pattee said. Roberta Green Ahmanson’s husband, Howard F. Ahmanson Jr., is heir to the Home Savings of America banking fortune. The company was bought for $10 billion in 1998 by Washington Mutual, which in 2008 collapsed in the largest bank failure in U.S. history.

Perry realtor Bill Clark, who acted as the Ahmansons’ chief foreman or seneschal during their Perry projects, read a statement Saturday from Roberta Green Ahmanson, who was unable to attend the lighting ceremony in person. Green Ahmanson, the “Iowa Girl” honored with the John Brommel sculpture, wrote:

One of the things I certainly never dreamed of growing up was that one day there would be a statue in my honor in Perry. I cherish the childhood I had. Parts of it were a challenge, but now I see those challenges as a gift, well, though I wouldn’t have said so at the time. Most of all I’m thankful that my parents and my father’s grandparents passed on the Christian faith. Second, I’m more thankful for the education that was then possible in Perry’s public schools. There I learned to read and write and think. I learned to speak in public. I was grounded in history and in that class called “Heritage,” I was introduced to world culture, to art, to music, to world religions, to literature. All this in a farming and railroad town in the middle of Iowa — a gift. So it is with great honor to become a tangible part of this town’s corporate memory. Whatever my husband and I were able to do here, my vision was first nurtured in the Baptist Church, Perry public schools and the Carnegie Library. So thank you all much more than I could say!! –Robert Green Ahmanson

Having spoken, Clark flipped the switch and with the soothing sounds of the pop song “Every Nice Thing” by The Afters filling the aural environment like a hymn to happy days, the lights came on, first blinking and rotating as in a disco ballroom and then settling into cool shades of blue and green.

Everyone admired the new artwork as the pop songtser sweetly crooned, “Sometimes I forget and take for granted that it’s a beautiful life we live.”