Vandalized Gettysburg monument repaired

NPS photo

The Arm is back.

Seven years after it was vandalized, the 11^th Massachusetts Infantry monument at Gettysburg National Military Park was whole again Thursday.

Once the sword-swinging granite arm was placed on top of the pedestal, the staff attached the sword and hand guard, the park said in a press release.

To replicate the vandalized pieces, National Park Service specialist Brian Griffin studied historic photos – including those by Willliam H. Tipton -- and fragments of the arm, fingers and sword.

“Brian … got a perspective of distances, lengths and sizes,” said Lucas Flickinger, supervisor of the monument preservation branch at the battlefield. “It was pretty painstaking. There were two or three weeks of scaling from the photos.”

Griffin spent about three months on the clay modeling and made a plaster cast that was sent to Granite Industries of Vermont in 2012, which made the final product.

The monument near Emmitsburg Road is a bit unusual.

Rather than depicting a full figure, the monument depicts an upraised arm, poised to bring a sword down.

“I think it is a very powerful symbol of resolve,” Flickinger told the Civil War Picket.

Additionally, the 4^th New York Artillery (Smith’s Battery), and the 114^th Pennsylvania Infantry were vandalized on the same day in February 2006. The park previously repaired them.

Despite a $30,000 reward for information, no arrests or convictions have been made. 

• Read the Picket’s previous profile of the monument preservation branch at Gettysburg
• More photos of repaired monument