Ronald Reagan Eats Invisible Potato Pancake
Doylestown, Pennsylvania
Bronze Reagan sits at a picnic table, just like he did when he visited a local Polish-American festival here in 1984. News reports at the time said that Reagan drew cheers when he declared, "Thank God for Pope John Paul II," before biting into his placki potato pancake.
You might think that the woman sitting next to him is First Lady Nancy Reagan. It isn't; it's Jennie Gowaty, the festival host. The statue itself wasn't unveiled until 2006, spearheaded by Joseph Laudanski, a local building contractor.
Laudanski didn't want a typical "heroic" presidential statue, so he had sculptors in Poland create the picnic table statue based on a photograph taken at the festival. And Laudanski feared that the potato pancake in Reagan's fingers might block Reagan's face, so Laudanski ordered it to be left off.