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The 41st president attends the unveiling of his likeness in the Bush Center at UNE, and jokes that his mother may not have liked it.

By EDWARD D. MURPHY, Staff Writer September 18, 2009

BIDDEFORD — George H.W. Bush said he's happy that his mother didn't live to see the statue of him that was unveiled Thursday at the University of New England.

There's nothing wrong with the statue, Bush said, but his mother would have seen his pose -- looking skyward -- as suggesting a lack of the modesty that she was known to insist on in her children.

"She'd think I'm bragging, looking up at the sky," Bush said in brief remarks in the George and Barbara Bush Center on the college's Biddeford campus.

The statue is a larger-than-life depiction of the former president, who also has a small library and offices in the building. The sculptor, John Andelin of Williston, N.D., said he was going for a look that showed the 41st president to be "visionary and optimistic."

Both qualities were necessary to craft the statue from a slab of Colorado white marble that weighed nearly 20 tons when Andelin started working on it two years ago, and to get the statue onto a small landing at the top of a set of stairs at the Bush Center.

Crews had to remove a section of the building's roof and use a crane to hoist the statue -- 2,700 pounds once Andelin was done carving -- into place.

Andelin, who's a pathologist in a hospital in North Dakota, said he's a fan of Bush, primarily for the family values the former president espoused and the Bushes' devotion to each other.

He began thinking about sculpting the statue eight years ago and started gathering information on his subject, including a digital scan of the president, five years ago.

Andelin, 58, said he's been interested in art, woodcarving and sculpture since his teens. He uses computer programs that help him rough out the shape of the statue, and then uses a variety of tools, including a chain saw with diamond tips, to carve away the marble.

His background in science leads him to a style that he describes as a mix of realism and idealism.

He's in talks with Bush's official presidential library, at Texas A&M University, to do a statue of George and Barbara Bush, Andelin said.

The UNE building is the first ever named for both Bushes, the couple said when it was dedicated last October. It houses a cafe, meeting rooms, the small Bush museum -- including a reproduction of his Oval Office desk -- and offices, including one that Bush can use and another for the university president.

Bush, 85, has been rumored to be ill -- he was the only one of the country's surviving presidents who didn't attend the funeral of Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., last month -- but he looked healthy Thursday.

His walk was a little halting and he leaned on a cane, but he also sped up the coast from Kennebunkport on his speedboat, Fidelity, while Barbara Bush came by car.

When the campus building, which overlooks Biddeford Pool, was dedicated last year, Bush had said he planned to come by boat, but the conditions then were a little too rough.

Staff Writer Edward D. Murphy can be contacted at 791-6465 or at:

emurphy@pressherald.com