An American Love Story: Letters From the Heart to the Statue of Liberty

Elise Schraner is 93, and her health is fading fast. Two years ago the Paso Robles, Calif., woman wrote a letter, a love letter of sorts.

Dear Miss Liberty , it began. It was in 1920, when my youngest sister, then 18, and I, 27, saw you for the first time. You were so very beautiful and promising. It has been a long time, and now you need a little help yourself. So here I am with my humble offering. I wish it could be more but . . . you understand. I am now 91 years old. You have kept most of your promises, and I have done the best I could. I have not grown rich, but I have been happy--most of the time. I love you, America, and thank you.

Sitting in an office here with a volunteer for one of the many Statue of Liberty centennial projects, Lynne Bundesen felt chills racing along her backbone as she read the hand-written missive.

“You mean,” she said, with amazement, “people really write to the statue?”

Normally, Bundesen writes about religion in daily life in a newspaper column, On Religion, syndicated by Gannett. As she began examining the letters men, women and children from all over the country had written to the Statue of Liberty, “What I thought was, ‘This is real religion. This is it.’ ”

Soon Bundesen found more letters, “like the one from the going-blind Vietnamese boat refugee guy. He sent a picture of the statue that he had picked up in the South China Sea, and he sent it because he was losing his vision, and it was the last thing he was going to see.”

Or there was the letter from Angela Van Voorst, a schoolgirl from Maurice, Iowa. Included with Van Voorst’s note was her sketch of the statue. “Dear Miss Liberty,” she wrote, “I hope you get fixed up as good as new. Write and tell me if you like the picture.”

‘I Was Hooked’

“At this point,” Bundesen said, “I was hooked.”

Determined that the letters should be assembled for publication, Bundesen began badgering various factions within the Liberty centennial bureaucracy. Most were so overwhelmed with their own involvements in the extravaganza that, Bundesen said, “they said ‘uh-huh, politics.’ ” Translated: Forget it, kiddo.

“For a month I tried to convince everyone it was a book,” Bundesen said. “Finally they said, ‘Do it yourself.’ ”

But Bundesen was a late entrant in the Liberty books sweepstakes. Already, most major houses had big, glossy books on the statue scheduled for publication on or around July 4. Summit Books, for example, had drafted Lee Iacocca to write the foreword on “Liberty: The Statue and the American Dream,” a big, $32.95 picture book written by National Geographic senior writer Leslie Allen and published in conjunction with the Statue of Liberty Foundation. Writing for Doubleday, James B. Bell and Richard I. Abrams already were out with “In Search of Liberty: The Story of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island” ($10.95). From Facts on File there was “Ellis Island: A Pictorial History” ($18.95) by Barbara Benton.

At Arbor House, playwright/novelist Michael Grumet had put together “Images of Liberty,” a compendium of pictorial representations that explores the statue’s symbolic value in American life and history. “Statue of Liberty: The First 100 Years” was the American Heritage offering: a comprehensive history of the statue originally written by French authors Christian Blanchet and Bertrand Dard, then reinterpreted in English by Bernard A. Weisberger. The American Heritage book is a companion volume to Ken Burns’ Academy Award-nominated documentary on liberty.

Other Books on the Statue

Richard Seth Hayden and Thierry W. Despont were the chief architect and associate architect, respectively, for the restoration of the statue. Their book for McGraw Hill, “Restoring the Statue of Liberty” ($14.95 paperback; $39.95, hardcover), encompasses such details as the computer renditions necessary for the rehabilitation of the torch.

Geared for children 8 or older, Mary J. Shapiro’s “How They Built the Statue of Liberty” (Random House), came out last fall, among the first of “about a gillion” young peoples’ books on the subject, said Sherry Gerstein of Random House. Another one of those gillion, Steven Krensky’s “Maiden Voyage,” from Atheneum, tells the history of the statue for young people through “human nature,” Michael Eisenberg of Atheneum said, “the personalized story of (sculptor Frederic Auguste) Bartholdi.”

Bartholdi recounts his own story in “The Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World” ($7.95, New York Bound), adapted from a book the sculptor wrote in 1884 to help raise funds for the statue’s American Pedestal Committee. “Gateway to Liberty: The Story of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island” (Vintage) was distinctive, Rosann Ward-Dawson of Vintage said, in that the book by Mary Shapiro not only adds the history of Ellis Island to the tales of Miss Liberty, but also includes 250 “never-before published” photographs. From Henry Holt and Co., a pop-up book, “The Story of the Statue of Liberty” ($15.95; illustrated by Joseph Forte, designed by Ib Penick), offers the statue’s history in 3-D.

Two books of post cards--one from Dover Press; the other from Madison Square Press--provide mailable histories. Though out of scale on an enormous base, the Statue of Liberty also is featured prominently in Dover’s “A Cut-and-Assemble New

York Harbor: A Full-Color Diorama” ($4.95) by A. G. Smith. In addition, Dover has the “Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island Coloring Book” ($2.75), also by A. G. Smith.

In “The Statue in the Harbor: A Story of Two Apprentices” (Silver Burdett), author Jeffrey Eger juxtaposes the fictional narratives of two workers on the statue: one from the crew that constructed the statue 100 years ago, and one from the team that renovated it. Beatrice Siegel’s “Sam Ellis’ Island” ($11.95, Four Winds Press) concentrates on immigration, while “A Statue for America” (Four Winds Press, $14.95) focuses on the statue’s first 100 years. Leonard Everett Fisher’s “The Statue of Liberty” (Holiday House) is a large-type volume. Extensive illustrations are the hallmark of Betsy and Giulio Maestro’s “The Story of the Statue of Liberty” (Lothrop, Lee and Shepherd).

“There are so many things being knocked out,” said Barbara Cohen, owner and publisher of New York Bound. “They’re coming out like crazy.”

‘Too Wonderful’

Bundesen knew her book might get lost in this tornado of Liberty volumes. “I just did this because I had to,” she said. “I ran across this material, and I just said, ‘Oh my heavens, it’s too wonderful for words.’ ”

With time working against her, Bundesen eventually landed on the publishing doorstep of Gibbs Smith of Peregrine Smith Books in Layton, Utah. Luckily for Bundesen, the veteran publisher shared her enthusiasm, citing the “great emotional appeal” of letters to the Statue of Liberty. “Dear Miss Liberty: Letters to the Statue of Liberty,” the 96-page, $7.95 result of their joint effort, will carry a July 4 publication date.

Working from her home in Santa Fe, N. M., Bundesen laid the letters out on the floor and found a pattern: “The first sighting of the statue was in 1887,” she said. “We go into the turn of the century, then World War I, two letters from women whose honeymoons took them past the Statue of Liberty, and so forth, on up to the Vietnamese boat refugee.

“It was America,” Bundesen said, “and when I hadn’t got the book deal yet, just had all these letters, I was absolutely obsessed with it.”

She easily sidestepped potential legal problems. Lawyers advised her that “the material in the letters belongs to the letter writers and the pieces of paper they are written on belong to the foundation.” On the other hand, “I had Xeroxes of 100 letters.”

Besides, she rapidly ascertained that letters to the Statue of Liberty were not likely to be a source of embarrassment to those who had written them. For example, Bundesen said, “When we called Elise Schraner to say her letter was going to be in a book, she said, ‘I forgot what I wrote, honey. Read it to me.’ ” Bundesen did. To which Schraner replied, “It was true then, honey, and it’s true now. Print it.”

Bundesen still bubbles when she discusses the project. “Every time I think about the letters again, I still get goose bumps,” she said. Rather than nuts and bolts, or engineering wizardry or diplomatic negotiations, the letters, she contends, are about the people of America and their relationship to the lady on Liberty Island.

Thoughts Behind Letters

“I think what built this Liberty weekend, what made it possible,” Bundesen said, “were these people, the people who wrote ‘We escaped from Tsarist Russia and we were detained at Ellis Island. . . . ‘

“My own feeling,” she said, “is that what all this is about is the people who sent in $5 (to the statue’s renovation fund), including the Macedonian Bulgarian Ladies Aid Society.”

Plans for Liberty Weekend promise a spectacle of mind-exploding proportions. There will be Tall Ships, concerts, light shows, the President, visiting dignitaries, intellectual colloquia, flags, funny hats and the unveiling of the face-lifted Statue of Liberty.

“Everyone’s going to have a great party and a great weekend,” Bundesen said, “and I just don’t want anybody to lose sight of what it’s all about.”