Pilgrim knocking

Perhaps Dylan's tune, 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door' is even more appropriate here. Lake View in Cleveland has several monuments by the top rank of American sculptors. Albin Polasek *1879, 1965† was Moravian born. He went on to Vienna, Philadelphia, Rome and New York City. He settled in Chicago and led the sculpture department at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1916-43. In 1950, he went to retire in Winter Park, Florida. He became paralyzed on his left side and sculpted with his right hand alone. There is a museum and sculpture gardens in Winter Park, Florida with some two hundred of his statues. On his own gravestone there is a bronze rondel of the XIIth Station of the Cross, the rood scene. He did many distinctly 'Catholic' sculptures. He sculpted in bronze the brother Saints Cyril and Methodius on the mountain top at Roznov pod Radhostem in eastern Moravia, where paganism was defeated by the Apostles to the Slavs.

He also did funeral monuments in Chicago, and this one in Cleveland for Webster Clay (Webb C) Ball *1847, 1922†. Ball was a jeweler who was consulted in the trials following the collision of two trains in Kipton, Ohio 1891. Eight people died. Ball became Chief Time Inspector of the rail roads. In 1893 standards were increased for railroad chronometers. His company became successful in making railroad watches. The phrase 'get on the Ball' may have come from that.

Albín Polášek. Pilgrim at the Eternal Gate. 1924. Cleveland.