Local News in Brief : Statue Honoring Merchant Seamen Arrives

A 22-foot-tall bronze statue honoring merchant seaman who served in wartime arrived Friday morning in Wilmington, where it will stay until it is mounted in front of the Los Angeles Maritime Museum in San Pedro on Veterans’ Day.

The statue, depicting two merchant seamen climbing a Jacob’s ladder after making a rescue at sea, is believed to be the first national memorial to merchant seamen in the United States. More than 5,600 merchant seaman were killed and 650 of their ships destroyed during World War II.

The multicolored statue, commissioned by the American Merchant Marine Veterans’ Memorial Committee, arrived on a flat-bed truck from Tempe, Ariz., where sculptors have worked on it for more than two years.

The unveiling is scheduled Nov. 11, Veterans’ Day, when local and national political leaders, as well as seamen from throughout the country, are expected to gather as the statue is mounted on a permanent base in John S. Gibson Jr. Park next to the museum. It will be surrounded by a circular pool, a cascading fountain and sloping wall veneered in marble.

“It’s going to be quite a spectacular thing,” said former seaman Ted Kedzierski, president of the memorial committee, which is made up of a group of seamen based in Wilmington. In August, 1986, the group started raising the $700,000 needed for the memorial.