Hospers Memorial Statues
Hospers, Iowa
Frederickus Reinders (1874-1959) who worked as a house painter, furniture salesman, and undertaker, created a colorful monument to those in his hometown who served in World War I. Standing 20 feet tall, dedicated on September 5, 1921, it features a doughboy, an eagle, American flags, and the goddess Columbia in a blue gown (The models for the doughboy and the goddess were local young people).
Reinders' other monuments in town -- built, like his WWI monument, out of steel, chicken wire, and painted cement -- were completed in 1945, and include a tribute to the battle for Iwo Jima, a Goddess of Victory, a Statue of Liberty, and a four-headed allegorical war dragon.
All of Reinders' sculptures have been restored and repainted by Josh Wynia and art professor Jake Van Wyk of nearby Dordt College.
Reinders' WWI sculpture was designed with a plaque to be inscribed with the names of Hospers doughboys who never made it home alive. However, it turned out that only two died, and not from battlefield wounds, but from the flu. So the plaque was left blank.