A while back someone asked about the statue on Brule. Here is an article on that statue. If I remember correctly one of the forum members, bruleman, also had information on that statue. http://www.cookcountynews-herald.com/news/2012-12-08/Columns/Historical_Reflections.html

Brule Lake statue

quote MHS67: "A while back someone asked about the statue on Brule. Here is an article on that statue. If I remember correctly one of the forum members, bruleman, also had information on that statue. http://www.cookcountynews-herald.com/news/2012-12-08/Columns/Historical_Reflections.html"

Thanks. I'd heard some of this, and seen the "Lady " twice, but these are far more details than I had before.

Hi Everyone, So I called my Dad last night and asked him about the Statue to see if he remembers my Grandmother creating it and to see what he knew about it. He had tons of information. So, I’m going to just tell the story: The idea for the statue was actually my Grandfather’s. Ragnar Söderlind. He was a physician and loved the outdoors. He often would travel with his companions for hunting and fishing trips. He was friends with a guy who worked for Pure Oil. My Dad seemed to think he was one of the top executives at Pure Oil. And they would often travel to Brule Lake for camping and fishing. I guess just getting there was quite an adventure. You needed to drive up an old abandoned rail-road track to a little boat. Then you would take the boat to this island where the statue was. They would camp on the island and fish. Well my Grandfather (he was about 44 at the time) loved to play little jokes with people and since his wife Nona was a sculptor he came up with the idea that there should be this grand statue landmark when you arrive to the island…kind of a little joke for when this guy from Pure Oil so that when he arrived to their island here was going to be this huge statue. So, my Grandfather ordered a bunch of Cement from Duluth and he, Nona and my uncles (Daniel, 17 and Bror, 16) and my Dad, 10 hauled all the cement out to the island. My Dad said they had to load the little boat with Sand which he said nearly sunk a few times in the process! So the 5 of them built the statue right there on the island. Now, my Grandfather loved to shoot film. He had a hand-windup 8MM camera and was always shooting film. So my Dad actually has the film which has now been put on DVD’s of him and my Uncles and Grandparents building the Statue. My Grandfather loved to use color film, so I'm hoping he was using color for that trip. The Statue was hollow, built with an internal structure surrounded with a mess and then they smeared concrete and shaped the statue. They didn’t really build it to last “forever”. My Dad heard that it was pretty much falling apart in the 80’s so I think it basically fell down and probably just got pushed into the water. My Dad was born in 1934 so it was constructed in 1944. I don’t think they thought it would last all that long so that it lasted 40+ years were probably longer than they expected. I’m going to see my Dad next month and I’ll see if I can get the video of the construction posted on you tube and I’ll post a link to it. I think it will be fun to see it being built. Anyway, mystery solved! Now you know the “rest of the story”.

This story was supposed to be a link from GSoderlind quite a while back.

Awesome. Great story!

That would be cool to see that video, thanks for doing this.