OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) – After close to a decade of work and collecting donations, organizers finally have a home for a statue of Omaha’s Broom Man.
Rev. Livingston Wills walked the streets of Omaha selling brooms and spreading joy. The statue will memorialize the positive spirit and work ethic of the Omaha icon.
Omaha artist John Lajba is working on a project he started years ago. He has created a statue of Wills and is preparing it to be covered in bronze.
“His eyes under his lids you’ll see that they’re concentrating on something,” Lajba said. “You know they’re very alive.”
Artist captures details of Rev. Wills’ blindness
Wills was without sight. Lajba puts details in his work that point out that fact.
“He’s not like grabbing like maybe someone with sight might do,” Lajba said. “Even the way he holds the brooms, he has to feel each balance of the brooms with his hands and with his shoulder.”
Lajba said he thinks making the statue life-size rather than larger than life makes it stronger.
“I think the ideal of him not being larger than life but him being life makes it stronger I think it’s better,” he said.
Committee formed to preserve Rev. Wills’ memory
Jim Backens of the Broom Man Committee said Rev. Wills had to work selling brooms to support himself.
“When you are a reverend and your congregation is 17 people you have to do something else in order to live,” Backens said. “And that’s what he did.”
Backens said Wills was an icon for Omaha and the committee became more aware of that truth as they worked on the project.
“We were afraid he would be forgotten when he passed away and that’s why we thought, let’s erect a sculpture,” he said.
Statue location chosen
The Broom Man Committee and the nonprofit Omaha Parks Foundation have selected a location to place the statue.
Tiffany Regan, executive director of the Omaha Parks Foundation, said the statue will face southeast on Turner Boulevard at Farnam Street.
“It’s almost as if he’s walking to cross the street like many of us saw over the years,” Regan said.
For Regan, the project brings back memories.
“My mom enjoyed Livingston very much and so she’d always buy a broom from him and that’s what we used at our house growing up were the brooms that he sold,” she said.
More than artwork
The people working on this project say the statue is more than a piece of artwork.
“He would meet people and talk to them and respect them and they would learn to respect him and we just need more people like the rev,” Backens said.
Organizers are still collecting donations to help pay for the sculpture, installation and decades of upkeep and maintenance. Information is available at omahaparksfoundation.org.
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