Statue of Freedom Plucked Safely From 130-Year Perch : Capitol: Hundreds cheer as 7-ton bronze goddess is lifted from dome after months of planning. Renovations will be next.

When the Statue of Freedom touched down on the Capitol Plaza shortly after dawn Sunday, a worker climbed a ladder, unhitched a web of protective straps and kissed the bronze goddess on the cheek.

A crowd of hundreds cheered as a helicopter crew plucked the statue from the U.S. Capitol dome where it has stood guard for 130 years.

Bringing the seven-ton, 19-foot 6-inch statue down from its perch 268 feet above the ground took months of planning. Architect of the Capitol George White was obviously relieved.

“I told everyone that if we dropped it, I had a 7 a.m. ticket to Mexico,” White said. “I’ve just torn that ticket up.

“Everything was done in the best way possible. There weren’t any hitches.”

The statue now begins five months of repair to mend the ravages of 13 decades of Washington weather.

Pilot Max Evans flew the rear position on the bright orange Skycrane helicopter, owned by the Erickson Air-Crane Co. of Central Point, Ore.

“This was quite a normal operation,” Evans said afterward.

“The ground crew does quite a lot of preparations to make this go easily. When that’s over, we come and do the easy part.”

It was making it look easy that impressed Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Ore.).

“The smoothness and perfection with which it happened was amazing,” he said.

“After seeing that statue up there for all of those years, to see it come down safely was truly great,” said Diane Lane, a Capitol staff member and one of the hundreds of people who rose before dawn to witness the operation.

When spectators were allowed near the statue, they saw Rick Mountjoy of Annapolis, Md., climb a ladder and give the statue a kiss on the cheek.

The workers who prepared the statue for its move from the top of the dome also got into the act. They pasted on the statue’s sword and shield two large red, white and blue labels which read: “Proud to be American.”

To prepare the hollow statue for lifting, workers had to jack it up with an internal column and slip a lifting ring under the base, White said.

“It had to be lifted from the bottom because it was assembled in five sections and we couldn’t be sure that it wouldn’t come apart,” he said.

The lifting ring will be made a permanent part of the statue’s base, adding four inches to its height.