Visit Rapid City | The Making Of City Of Presidents

How do you view the future of Rapid City? People are inquiring from all parts of the country. How do we do this? How do we do that? What other community of this size is economically diverse as this is? We have a major tourism industry. We have a major ag industry. We're a major medical regional hub. We have universities. We have the air. I'm going to state it this way. What a great time to be living in Rapid City. Hello, friends across America and beyond. Welcome to Amplify Rapid City. Whether you live in Rapid City, whether you're planning a visit, planning to move yourself, or maybe even your business here, Amplify Rapid City is your headquarters for valuable and exciting information and news. I'm Chris Johnson, your host, and I'd love nothing more than for you to be my guest, sit back, relax, and enjoy as we Amplify Rapid City. What keeps you going in anything is you know and you believe it's going to work. That's not easy, and accomplishing things and overcoming the hurdles is not easy, but you get up in the morning, you figure it out, and you overcome it, and you know what? You make it work. I started. First night, I cried because what am I doing? You know, this is crazy. I think in America, we sometimes cheer for the underdog. I don't know why. It's just because a lot of times, a lot of us have had struggles. For me, the entrepreneurial mindset is this one of I'm going to get stuff done. I'm going to scrap and figure out, you know, what it takes to garner the resources to get things done. It's not always just my job, but it's a job that needs to be done. When the positive thinkers are in charge, wonderful things happen. A lot of us have had struggles. It's human nature that we have challenges that we overcome. Sometimes you have to do more than your share, and I think that's probably one of the most important lessons. Optimism provides the basic energy of civilization. Pessimism is a waste of time. You know, it's not me, me, me. It's actually us, us, us. What is good for all of us? And this is what's fun about Rapid City. It seems like where we need visionaries, we're getting them. In my lifestyle, I like to blaze new trails. You can't say maybe. There's so much energy in Rapid City. If I show up every day, if I work hard every day. It just exploded on its own. It was amazing. Yes, we can. We absolutely can. And it worked. And it worked. We can do that. And I think if we keep doing that, I think it would be great. I'm going to state it this way. What a great time to be living in Rapid City. Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Amplify Rapid City. You just heard a montage of Amplify Rapid City guests, and I put it together for a very good reason. There is a common spirit of optimism among the people who live here that is not only undeniable, but it is very contagious. And you're going to experience that optimism in every episode of Amplify Rapid City, but especially today, because we're going to talk about a 20-year project called the City of Presidents. It's a statuary of life-size statues of each and every president of the United States of America. It's the only one of its kind in the entire country. Not even in Washington, D.C. will you find a statuary of every president. This is a project that was initiated by local people. It was entirely funded by private dollars. It's a wonderful example of how artists and entrepreneurs and your city government and the entire population of a city can work together to get a common purpose underway and do what it takes to get it done. And I'm happy to say we have with us today the person who really coordinated the entire effort and saw it through from beginning to end. Her name is Valerie Davis. And I'm also happy to say we have with us one of the six sculptors it took to get this entire project done. His name is James Van Nuys. James, let's start with you. Tell us a little bit about your story. All right, I'll try to make this as brief as possible. Take as much time as you'd like. In 1885, my great-aunt Alice Bauer moved to Rapid City and married Joe Gossage, who had started the Rapid City Journal. A couple of years later, the rest of the Bauer family came and homesteaded east of Hermosa. That was in 1887. They had a family band, a brass band, that played all around the Black Hills. Anyway, my grandmother, Laura Bauer Van Nuys, lived in Rapid City for most of her life when my father was born here. He was teaching in Whittier, California when I was born, so I'm not a native Rapid Cityan. I arrived here when I was about a year and a half old. I grew up on 4th Street, which interestingly is only about four blocks away from where we recently installed the Obama statue. Who would have thought? Yeah, my old neighborhood. I've lived all over the country doing various things, but I've been back in Rapid City more or less permanently since about 1990. And as I mentioned, our other special guest today is Dallery Davis. She's a very talented and I might say very reliable part of our community. Dallery, tell us about yourself. Well, I was born in Belfouche. I'm a country girl at heart, and my father was a real estate promoter and entrepreneur, and he also wore many, many hats. And my mother was an artist, and not a professional artist, but she showed locally, and her paintings were quite lovely. So I grew up with a combination of business and art, and this apple didn't fall far from those two trees. In the process of going to college, I went to several different places, ended up in Los Angeles at the University of Southern California. And so I stayed there for a number of years. I probably lived in California, all told about 15, 20 years. I would live there for a while and then go back to the Black Hills and then go back to California. So the last time I moved, I thought I would probably go back to California. But my son ended up being here in Rapid City, and he had children. And you know what happens when grandchildren arrive. You just really don't want to get too very far from them. So here I am. Well, I got involved with the City of Presidents in that I was working with a number of artists and working in an art marketing capacity. And in that capacity, trying to find commissions for the artists. And I went to a Lincoln Day dinner in 1999, and I was with John Lopez. And we were trying to, we had set up a table, a booth with a number of John's sculptors. And he was doing sculpting of wildlife, horses, ranch life at that time, and wasn't doing too much with the human figure. But he was at kind of a place where he needed more to do. And in the process of wandering around prior to the banquet, I noticed Don Perdue in the crowd. And I had remembered that I had spoken with Don a number of years ago. I was representing another artist and he'd come to visit with this idea he had. He had been to Russia and he had seen the grand Russian statues. He had the idea that on a very grand scale, he would be doing heroic statues of the American presidents. And so remembering that conversation, I turned to John and I said, John, how would you like to do presidents? And he said, oh, no, that sounds really boring. And I said, well, another friend, Ken Davis was standing there. And I said, Ken, would you, you know Don Perdue, would you introduce us to him, please? And so Ken did. We went over and he introduced us. And I, in the conversation with Don, kind of rolled it around to his creative interests and how he tended to tend to take a very creative look at a number of different situations. And, and I said, I kind of remember that at one point you were thinking about doing presidents. And he said, oh, that was a very long time ago and it just didn't go anywhere. It's just, it just, it's not, it's not gonna work, no. And I said, well, would you be open to discussing that? And he said, oh, not, not really. And so I, I wrote him a letter and kind of outlined the, the, the vision that I had at that point, because John and I had done a lot of brainstorming on the subject. Sent him the letter and then phoned him and he said, well, we could And we did discuss it and it turned out to be quite wonderful. And this would have been when you started those discussions? 1999. Correct. Now, Rapid City is not that big a city and it took many sculptors to get this project done. I've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 that were involved in the whole project. Is that correct? That is correct. Five actual and one team. So how do you round up that many sculptors for a project in Rapid City? Well, the thought was that we had to have sculptors from South Dakota. That was definitely something that we needed to do. And it's not, it wasn't at all difficult because I was already working with most of the, with the sculptors at that time. I had worked a little with James once when I had an art gallery and met him and was incredibly impressed with his work as everyone is. So, but this area is incredibly rich in artistic talent. Well, I was going to say, we must have the most sculptors per capita of any city, that any major city in the U.S. Oh, I would think so. I would think so. I mean, it's just absolutely amazing. I first worked with Dale Lanthier for quite a period of time and John, John Lopez and Jim Walker were working with Dale as well. So then I had a very good working relationship with the two of them. And I went to several of the, the peer, the governor's ladies art show. And there I met Lee Looning and Sherry Treve and I liked their work. They weren't doing bronzes at that time. They were doing cast paper pieces, but the cast paper was done just like bronzes. You take, you take the, the paper, grind it up and pour it into a mold that you've made. So it involves sculpting first and then pouring the cast paper into the mold. So it wasn't going to be much of a, much of a change to pour bronze instead of paper. You mentioned that Don Perdue got his inspiration from being over in Russia. Well, well with the furniture company, apparently he was working in Russia and, and promoting his, his furniture business. And let me see if I can remember the story right. He'd been very, very intrigued with the, with the huge heroic. When, when you get larger than monumental, the statues are called heroic. And he was so intrigued with the huge heroic statues of, of, of Russian figures. This is of course during the Soviet era. And there was a, a sculptor that was involved in, in doing the work. And he, he had previously kind of had this in his mind because the, the Lincoln museum in the Borglum museum had a statue of a seated Lincoln. Was on temporary display downtown. In the winter, they would loan it to the Alex Johnson. And so in the winter, it would sit in Rapid City. In the summer, it would go round back up to, to the museum. And Don was noticing how people interacted with that statue and how they'd like to, he was on a bench and liked to sit with it. And he thought, you know, that, that would just really be cool. And if they're responding this enthusiastically with one statue with one president, just imagine if we had all of them on the street. So then while he was in Russia, noticing these huge statues, he thought, this is what we need. The Avenue of Presidents, you know, like the huge presidential statues going down Mount Rushmore Road or wherever. I don't know if he'd pick that road. I, I could imagine maybe there being a statue of every president, although I don't know what exists in Washington DC or someplace like that, but is Rapid City unique? Is there a statuary that features every president anywhere else? No, I don't believe there is. But when you think about all the presidents that there are featured in Rapid City, you have the, the Wax Museum, which has all of the presidents. For a while in the, in the Deadwood area, there was a, a place where a sculptor had, had sculpted just the busts of all the presidents. And they were in a kind of plaster of Paris or concrete, I think they were in concrete. So when you start counting up all of the images of the presidents of the Black Hills, it's a pretty overpowering number. And that was even before we had the City of Presidents. So you mentioned James and, and, and John Lopez and Sherry Trebe. Did you know the other artists at that time? Well, I knew, I knew everybody. First on my list was John Lopez and Jim Maher. And then I added Lee Looning and Sherry Trebe when I met them in Pierre. And Ed Halafka was an artist from Sturgis. And I knew him on a personal level, we were social friends. And he's, he was an artist of amazing, a sculptor of amazing talent. And he had moved to St. George, Utah. And he was working, I believe, with the Las Vegas, or maybe he was in Las Vegas working with a firm that was doing fiber cast pieces for the different casinos. So I contacted him, though he wasn't technically in South Dakota, he was certainly a South Dakota guy. I contacted him to see if he might be interested in the project. And he was quite excited about it. He hadn't done a bronze for a long time. You know, you get all these sculptors, just kind of, they're there. And I guess maybe it's just a situation of right time, right place, right people. Oh, absolutely. Because I was actively working, looking for work for, for Jim and John and Lee. And, and, and Ed was in the back of my mind, of course, whenever, whenever a commission would come up. So you get all the artists there. Then comes the question of how do you, how do you fund this thing? I have a feeling there's a story behind that. Well, there, there is a story. And it's actually one of the secrets of our success. Because so many sculpture projects, in my experience, fall apart with the funding, you'll have this great idea, and you'll have the people who want the sculpture. And then you start thinking, well, maybe we could sell maquettes, maybe we could sell enough maquettes to fund this thing. And that almost never happens. So the fact that what we had to do was have a steady stream of income, because the thing was kind of time sensitive. Don really wanted to get this project done while he was still around to enjoy it, which, which in his mind that we had about 10 or 15 year period in to get them done. So we decided that we, we had, at this point, we had four artists, I count Lee and Sherry is one, we had four artists, we decided we would do four sculptures a year, it would take us about 10 years. So that's a pretty fast track to raise a couple million dollars. And we decided that we would not take any corporate or any government funding at all, it would all be private funding or corporation funding. And Don very graciously offered to loan the money to the city of so that we could pay the artists on a regular basis. And we would go ahead and do the fundraising. And then as we got funds for the for the statues, we would be able to pay off our debt. And the statues were $50,000. So back in 2000, that was a pretty good song. I'm guessing they'd be more now. Oh, my yes, yes. The 50,000 we stuck with for the duration of the project, because that was the contract. But we did learn something about that. We learned that the cost of the increasing cost of of copper for one thing, where it was a pretty grand figure when we started out, it was, it was just about a break even figure when we finished. Well, so the artists are in place, the ideas in place, the fundraising is pretty much in place. And then comes the problem. I just got done interviewing the chief operating officer of the Mount Rushmore Society. We talked about how Gutzon Borglum was kind of a temperamental guy. And I think sculptors in particular get a little bit of a bad rap for for being artists with a temper. Sometimes it's deserved. So did you kind of have to play mediator in this whole process between the artists in the project and in Don and all the different people that were involved? Right, right. My title was artist liaison. And so I worked with the artists represented the artists, and then we presented the work to the to the board. And Don and I kind of had this idea that we could do it ourselves for quite a while, just the two of us. But we pretty quickly learned that it was going to be a pretty intensive operation. And so we decided we needed to put a board together. And the first person we asked to be on the board was Steve Rollinger. He was then on the city council. And we figured that because we were going to have to get this through the city council, you know, we couldn't just start putting statues on the street, right? The city wanted to be involved. It was their street, we needed permission, because all of the statues were going to be on Main Street and St. Joe. And we would just go in both directions doing for a year, and they would be on a particular block. And then we'd move either one direction or the other, we didn't have a preconceived idea of which way we're going to move. We would kind of look at the quartet of statues that we have, and try to make them somewhat site specific to the corners that we had available to us. You know, every one of the statues, I could tell you a story that that was concerning the creation of the statue. And the matter of fact, I'm in the process of writing a book about that. So it's, it's not very far down the road, but I have the outline done in several chapters. Multitudes of people come in and enjoy these statues and, and take pictures with them. And sometimes there's one with a saddle. So I see people sitting in that saddle. And it's just amazing to see how people enjoy it. And, you know, we talk about taking things for granted, and it's pretty easy to look at it and say, well, this is really beautiful and, and not think about all the difficulties that were in front of you on that road from beginning to end. But it's been quite a journey, I would say, to say the least. Oh my goodness. But the, with the saddle, you mentioned that. And an interesting story of the saddle is that you don't really think about Cal Coolidge as being a Western kind of guy. So how did he end up in a cowboy hat with a saddle? He had a summer White House here in 1927. And he was going through a particularly difficult personal time. So he and his wife, Grace, came. And they were horseback riding one time. He had been given a hat and the entire cowboy outfit, a horse, a saddle. And they met a group of Boy Scouts. And one Boy Scout was riding with a particularly beautiful saddle. And President Coolidge said, that's an amazing saddle. It's just lovely. So the troop decided that they were going to give him a saddle like that. And it was a Duhamel saddle. So the saddle was created. And it was given to Coolidge. And it was in the White House for a while. Well, it didn't really fit with the White House decor. And he knew he was never going to use a saddle again. So he said to a friend, I've got this saddle and I don't know what to do with it. And the friend said, why don't you give it to a friend? And he did. He gave it to the friend, who later sold it at an auction in Cody. And a local man, Larry Larson, who was a photographer, the horse guy, bought the saddle. And so when John was going to do the sculpture, he talked to Larry to borrow the saddle. And Larry very graciously gave him the original saddle that Coolidge had. So, you know, what a wonderful opportunity. And sometimes with objects, you can put the, you can put the molding material over the actual object. But he didn't want to do that. I mean, it would probably not be too good of a saddle. So he very intricately sculpted that thing in detail. And he was, well, John was sculpting it, that the great fire in Piedmont occurred. I'm not sure what year that would have been. There was a huge fire in Piedmont. There had originally been a hailstorm that had taken away the vegetation. And then a fire came. There was nothing to stop it. There was a flood, a fire. And I was at John's studio working and we got news that we had to evacuate. So we grabbed almost everything we could, stuck it in the car, drove off, and we got just past the barrier. And I said, Oh my God, John, we forgot the saddle. So we were just praying that the flood wouldn't get the saddle, that the fire wouldn't get the saddle. What would we tell Larry? My goodness. So very, very tense moments holding our breath. And the fire didn't hit John's place and the flood went around it. Just like divine guidance that went one way and the other way. And the saddle was back. That's quite a story. Isn't it a story? And like you say, there's probably one for every sculpture. Right. And I'd love to hear all them. Maybe we can do a podcast just about those stories one at a time. I'm going to turn to James now. And I want to first mention that you did four of these. James Fillmore. Yes. And then Franklin Pierce and Andrew Johnson and then Obama. That was your most recent one. Right. And kind of pick up on some of the things that you said. You talked about the design of each statue. Was it a collaborative effort? And were you given kind of free reign? I can't imagine a sculptor, a really good sculptor, appreciating people kind of looking over your shoulder and telling you how to do your sculpture. Were you given free reign on how to design these? Yes, we're given pretty free reign to come up with ideas. The process is somewhat collaborative. The board might have ideas of their own. We might go back and forth a bit. But yes, pretty much the process that we would go through or that I would go through. The first three presidents I did were all from the 1850s or thereabouts. So there were not a lot of photographs of them available. So there were only a few photos that I could look at. And I would look at the photos to try to get some idea of a pose or an activity or an expression or anything that would suggest a statue. So with Miller and Fillmore, which was the first one I did, there was a nice photo of him sitting in a chair with his right leg crossed and reading a book and kind of looking up. And that was the pose that I went with. That was completely suggested by that photo. And I would say the same with the others. I was kind of guided by whatever images I could come up with. So once you found that photo, was there a second step? Did you get a chair and have somebody sit in one and then take several angles to try to capture that? The second step would be to get the idea approved by the board of the city of presidents. So I would usually do a drawing, submit that, and then once you've got your idea approved, you go to the maquette stage. You make a small model of it, which I think is 29% life size, somewhere around a third of life size. Most of the maquettes must be somewhere around 21 inches tall or something like that. In this process, what was in place for each of the statues? Same process? Yes, yeah, it is. And yet you were able to push through four per year? Well, actually... It took 20 years, right? Right, right. Yeah, it did take about 20 years. But in the beginning, the artists were collectively responsible for every statue. And then they were given one statue that was theirs. But there was a lot of collaboration in the beginning with the artists because the concept would have to first be approved by the artists. And the artists would work with one another. They would make suggestions. And it was sometimes kind of difficult because when you've got three other artists telling you, well, you know, this isn't quite right, that's not quite right. It was sometimes a rather sensitive situation. But marvelously, the four guys and Gal just worked together wonderfully. Very gracious and generous about giving help and comments and very gracious in accepting it. So once the artists board approved of it, then I would take it to the foundation board. And it was so refined at that point that they almost always accepted it. Did you find yourself kind of learning more and more about the person you were sculpting as you were in that process? And it was each one kind of a journey in a sense? Well, I would do as much research as I could. Yeah, I can't study it up like a history PhD. But find out a little bit about their life and their presidency. And yeah, you would get to know them somewhat and try to get some of the personality into the piece. Well, I think all the sculptures are amazing as far as having personality with each one of them. And I don't think there's a single one that I couldn't say that about. Is there moments in sculpting them, James, where there were revealing moments and you kind of took a little bit of a different direction as far as an expression on a face or a pose or, you know, little nuances? I think in every project you do, whether it's a landscape painting or a sculpture or whatever, there is a moment like that where you will have been working on the foundation of the piece for months or weeks or whatever. And suddenly it'll take on a life of its own. It'll stop just being paint or clay. And you respond to that. And that does change the piece. You can work on a piece for a long time and not find it very inspiring. But if you're doing a good job at a certain point, it'll come to life. The Obama statue, I came up with an idea pretty early in the process. Now the Obama, of course, is very different from doing a president from the 1850s. For one thing, everybody knows what he looks like. For another thing, there's a million photos available instead of a dozen. So there's a great deal of material to look through. And I looked through probably thousands of photos online. And I found a pose that I liked immediately, which was the Obama family walking onto the stage at his first inauguration. Obviously, I couldn't do the whole family, but I really liked the way the balance, the visual balance of him and his daughter. Him and his daughter walking onto the stage, holding hands, and he's waving and looking to one side a bit. And she's got a big smile on her face. Of course, the first thing that I think of as a sculptor is that I don't want to do a big smile on somebody's face because they're very difficult to do. Anybody with a toothy smile is fairly likely to look goofy in sculpture. John Lopez did a nice job on the Jimmy Carter statue. Ronald Reagan is great too. He's got an open mouth smile too that Jim handled very well. So I had examples to look at from the other sculptors. But anyway, I decided I would go ahead and attempt that. Anyway, I really liked the way that piece moved and just the kind of the dynamism of the two separate size figures. Because one of the problems we have as sculptors in the City of Presidents is that there's an awful lot of guys in suits. And we have to try to come up with something to make each one interesting. First one that comes to my mind is Taft with the baseball behind his back. Taft is a great piece. And then who's reading the book? Oh, that's Grover Cleveland. Grover Cleveland. I love that one. I love them all. Well, the holy grail of concept is make it interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the artists knew that it had to be interesting, even if they pushed credibility in one direction or another. And even if they picked just some tiny little piece from their life, like a beast, like the ball, you know, it had to be interesting. Yeah. And I mean, it really does take a lot of thought to imagine what pose you're going to do a president in because they're not there to kind of tell you what they would prefer. You know, Lyndon Johnson is sitting on a ledge. And I'm always amazed at the gaze, the piercing gaze of Richard Nixon through his fingertips, all touching together. And you just almost wonder what he's got on his mind. So each and every one of them we could talk about that way. Valerie, was there ever a point in time when you almost threw up your hands and thought this just isn't going to happen? No, no. I as far as the project is concerned, no, we had full confidence it was going to happen. Really, I don't think in any of our minds. I've had people come up to me and say, you know, we just didn't think this was ever going to happen. One of our first donors said that I donated to the project, but I didn't think it was going to happen. But I think those of us who were involved with it were so dedicated that there was no doubt in our mind that it was going to happen. We hit a small bump in the road with the FDR statue when during the process of making FDR, Ed Halafka got a commission to do a piece in Washington, D.C. in the Smithsonian, the American Indian Museum. And he just kind of let FDR slip and went off on the other project. And we excused him. We gave him a leave of absence. But there was one year when we had only three statues because FDR wasn't bound. And so the following year, then we had five. But that was when I asked James to come on board because Ed was our absentee artist. And I wanted to have someone locally that we could work with. And I know that James is wonderful to work with. And so he agreed. So he came on and it was always kind of a standing joke if the artists were misbehaving or not quite keeping up with something, I would threaten them with Millard Fillmore. I would say, now, shape up or you're going to get Millard Fillmore next. Anyway, James' first statue was Millard Fillmore. So we got that out of the way. Was it a punishment of sorts or by voluntary basis? No, I was glad to get the job. I had not done a life-size bronze before that. I'd done many tabletop pieces. I had worked in a foundry. I had put life-size bronze figures together in the foundry. So I was very familiar with the process. But that was a big learning curve for me to make that first one. James, speak for a moment to the importance of Dallery's role from the beginning to end of this project and how crucial was it that she was in the place that she was for this project to get finished? Well, Dallery is a great person to work with and an easy person to work with and a creative thinker. Frequently, in the City of Presidents and now on the trail of governors, I will brainstorm ideas with Dallery and see if we can come up with a concept together. So she's always been very helpful to me. You described yourself as a liaison. Did you find yourself almost acting as a translator to translate between? The different languages, yes. One of my most difficult jobs really was working with the board and keeping them on track with our original vision. Every once in a while, there'd be kind of a glitch and another vision would appear and I would say, no, no, no, that's not what we're about. That's not what we're doing. And so I think that was maybe the most difficult part of the project. Working with the artists has been wonderful. You know, there's not really a prima donna in the bunch. They're a great group to work with. And when James came on board and not having done a live size, the other artists were very, very gracious and generous in their time, helping him and giving him ideas and working with him. So I occasionally referred to this group as the dream team. And they didn't like that very well. And they said not to call them that anymore. But honestly, they were a dream team. They are a dream team to work with. We're working with the same artists in the Trail of Governors. The Trail of Governors is kind of a sister project to the presidential project. And we've got the same artists. Now throngs of people are coming through downtown Rapid City and enjoying these statues. Have you been surprised at all at the feedback that you've received over the years? And especially now that you're basically finished until the next one, right? It's been very gratifying. It really has. I can't say that I was surprised. But it's been extremely gratifying that the statues are as well loved as they are. I think most people, when I look online at the feedback that you get online, I mean, obviously most of it is way up on the five star rating. People are so pleasantly surprised when they come to Rapid City. They don't necessarily come here to see the statues. But once they're here, it is just amazing to them. And I don't think they take it lightly what a big project it was. No, I don't think so. And I think really what the City of Presidents brought to Rapid City was a certain amount of energy. You know, when we started in 1999, went on to 2000, we did the first four in 2000. And there were empty stores in downtown Rapid City. And there was no Main Street Square. And I remember, Chris, that you were a very early supporter of our project. You were one of our biggest fans and really gave us a lot of hope and a lot of encouragement because, you know, there were some kind of tough days. Well, we did before the summer nights, as you remember, we did the Festival of Presidents. And one of those festivals, I think maybe every year we featured some artists in the parade that we would do. And I believe during the festival, we unveiled FDR one year. And I remember your description as you were describing it to the crowd of people around there. And I think you did such a wonderful job talking about how you were able to capture the pain and disability that he was suffering through. And at the same time, being a president, a very difficult time in the country. And you could see the braces through his pant leg. So that had to have been a very difficult one to accomplish. Well, that's another one of those wonderful stories. But I know you were greatly involved in that in the parade and the presidential parade. And I think that sort of migrated into the summer nights. And that brought another level of energy to Rapid City. I like to think of it as a catalyst, you know, it was a catalyst. Yeah, yeah, certainly it was it was a catalyst. And again, just the energy, there's so much energy in Rapid City. And I think the the presidents getting started and showing up on street corners on a regular basis, added a great deal to the energy of Rapid City. Well, when you combine it with the obvious that Mount Rushmore is here, and you got 3 million in a good year visiting Mount Rushmore. I mean, it's the perfect either prelude or post scripts to a visit to Mount Rushmore. And, and I think we're kind of like a mecca of patriotism here, aren't we? I think so. We were voted America's most patriotic city. And well, our motto was, you've been to Mount Rushmore and you've seen four presidents. Now come to Rapid City and see all of you know, from the mountain to Main Street, see all of the presidents. Now people can take a self guided tour. How do they how there's materials that are provided for that as an assistance to that? How do they get those? They're available. Several stores have them. I think Visit Rapid City is now in charge of printing them. And they and where the the the in back of where the ice skating rink is, there's a place where there are brochures and they can be picked up there. So they're pretty readily available. What's next for you? What's next for me? Well, next for me is is finishing up the Trail of Governance project. We are two thirds of well more than two thirds of the way. I think we've only got two more years to do on the Governance project. And that may take another podcast. That may take another podcast. Let's plan on that because you put work clothes on a lot of dreams here in Rapid City, don't you? Well, it's a very supportive town. You know, not only are the artists incredibly supportive of one another, but we've had an incredible support from the talent from the donors. You know, we had people donating to the project when they didn't think it would come to fruition, but they just felt the need and the obligation to become involved. Well, just another example of Rapid City is a place where dreams really do come true. I like that. It's tremendous. If you haven't researched this, please get online. What's the best way for them to get online and learn more about the City of Presidents? Well, the Chamber of Commerce has a great website. So all you would have to do is Google the City of Presidents and you'll certainly get to the Chamber of Commerce and the Visit Rapid City site. It's one of many, many reasons to come downtown and spend time downtown. Downtown Rapid City and Rapid City in general is a destination in itself anymore. It used to be the place where people slept while they went to the other tourist destinations. That is no longer the truth about Rapid City. James, anything you want to add? No. Man of few words, but many hats. And another hat that you're going to put on for us right now, I'm hoping, is your musician cap. And you're not only going to play a song for us, but you're going to play a song about a president, which is so fitting at this time. Well, I dug up a song that I've heard ever since I was in high school. It's a song that bluegrass and folk bands have done. I imagine it was written in the early 1900s. It's about William, was McKinley's first name William? President McKinley. And Teddy Roosevelt appears in the song as well. McKinley was assassinated six months into his term as president, and somebody wrote a song about it. This is it. I've never sung it before today, so you'll have to. Have to give me a little latitude. McKinley hollered, McKinley squalled. The doctor said, McKinley, I can't find the ball. You're bound to die, you're bound to die. Look here, you rascal, see what you've done. You shot my husband, Ivor Johnson's gun. For what you've done. Roosevelt in the White House, doing his best. McKinley's in the graveyard, taking his rest. Lord, he's gone, long gone. Roosevelt in the White House, jerking from his cot. McKinley's in the graveyard, he's never gonna wake up. Lord, he's gone, solid gone. McKinley Blues. That was beautiful. Thank you so much. What a treat, not just for us, but for all of our Amplify Rapid City listeners. I hate to cut it off at this. It seems like we just got started, but I know you got other things to do. I just want to thank you, Dallery, and you, James, for taking the time to come and, as I always say, to do your part to help me amplify Rapid City. So, thank you so much for coming and sharing your time with us. Thanks for having me, Chris. Thank you very much. Thank you for having us. And thank all of you, my great and wonderful Amplify Rapid City listeners. Thank you for doing your part to help me amplify Rapid City. James, you want to take us out?