This weekend, Memorial Union brought back an icon from UW-Madison’s past. The ice-covered Statue of Liberty made a rare appearance this weekend on Lake Mendota as a part of the union’s Winter Carnival.
Forty years ago, campus pranksters Leon Varjian and Jim Mallon used around $4,000 of Wisconsin Student Association funds to create the first version of Lady Liberty made out of chicken wire, papier-mâché and muslin cloth on a cold February night in 1979.
The two were the heads of the Pail and Shovel Party, notorious for creating pranks around campus, including placing 1,008 plastic pink flamingos on Bascom Hill the same year of the first statue.
The tradition has a long and unique history, including the first iteration of the statue being burned. The structure was fireproofed the following two years but was not seen again until 1996.
The last time the statue made it out on to Lake Mendota was in 2009, according to UW’s website.
This weekend saw the resurgence of the statue, but in a different form. This year, the structure was inflated and tied down to the ice instead of being assembled using styrofoam and green plywood as it had in the past.
“The idea to return Lady Liberty to Lake Mendota as part of Winter Carnival is one that I’ve been working for about two years,” Wisconsin Union President and UW-Madison senior Mills Botham said. “This was the first year that I found a practical means of making its revival possible.”
Varjian passed away in 2015, but his legacy of bringing fun to Madison’s students remains alive and well.
