Angel statues have long been a source of fascination, often shrouded in mystery and folklore. From Iowa to Washington D.C., these monuments evoke a range of emotions and stories. This article delves into the history and legends surrounding two notable angel statues: the Ruth Anne Dodge Memorial in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and the Black Angel of Iowa City.
The Ruth Anne Dodge Memorial: Council Bluffs' Black Angel
Ruth Anne Dodge Memorial. Source: KMTV
In Council Bluffs, Iowa, stands a statue atop the bluff just outside the entrance of what was known as “the old burial grounds”. It's well known as the Black Angel, but its proper name is the Ruth Anne Dodge Memorial. This statue has been a source of fascination since it was erected and is quite likely Council Bluffs’ most valuable artistic treasure. It is also on the National Register of Historic Places.
The statue commemorates Ruth Anne Dodge, the wife of General Grenville M. Dodge. The concept of the angel came from a vision experienced by Mrs. Dodge during three nights preceding her death. In 1916 Ruth Anne Dodge described to her daughters a dream in which she was on a rocky shore and through the mist saw a small boat approach.
At the front of the boat a beautiful angel held a small bowl and spoke softly, encouraging Mrs. Dodge to take a drink. Twice she refused, the third night she drank, reportedly feeling like a she was “transformed into a new and glorious spiritual being. A short time later she died. On her deathbed she told her daughters the angel had given her the water of life, and she now had immortality.
Read also: Experience Fad's Fine African Cuisine
Her daughters commissioned Daniel Chester French to create a memorial to Mrs. Dodge based on her description of this dream. Part of the allure is who sculpted it. Daniel Chester French also created the famed seated Abraham Lincoln inside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. and the minuteman in Concord, Massachusetts. The statue was finished in 1920, depicting a winged angel with one arm outstretched and the other holding a vessel from which water flows.
You can see the Ruth Anne Dodge Memorial at the top of North Second Street in Council Bluffs, just east of the entrance to Fairview Cemetery. Tales of the angel flying off her pedestal at night or of her eyes following a person as they walk past are unsubstantiated at best.
The Tragic Life of Audrey Munson
One of the Angel's most interesting stories is it's dedication... or lack thereof. A glamorous ceremony high profile ceremony that included the famed sculptor and even the president's wife was planned, but scrapped in favor a small dedication that wasn't even announced. Why the abrupt switch? Historian Robert Svacina explains the family was so embarrassed of the statue they didn't want any public attention.
The woman, Audrey Munson, was the country’s first supermodel. A little over a decade after the sculpture was erected, Munson was admitted to a hospital for the insane by her mother after she tried to die by suicide. And for 65 years she had no visitors, and she died at the age of 104 in an unmarked grave. So, the image, meant to represent the angel, is of a terribly tragic figure and in that way, it is a black angel.”
Some people believe that if you touch it, you may be cursed. Some people believe the space is haunted. Some people believe that if you touch it, you may be cursed. Some people believe the space is haunted. The legends I’ve heard is the stairs change numbers when you go up and down, and if you try to take pictures you can lose your footage,” Kat Slaughter, Historical Society of Pottawattamie County Director of Museums, said.
Read also: The Story Behind Cachapas
The Black Angel of Iowa City
The Black Angel of Iowa City. Source: Pinterest
The Black Angel of Iowa City, Iowa, is one of the most iconic symbols of the city. It attracts visitors from around the region to a plot in Oakland Cemetery. The angel statue sits upon a headstone that reads "Rodina Feldevertova," which means "the Feldevert family" in Czech. It's where the remains of Teresa and Nicholas Feldevert and Teresa's son Eddie Dolezal lay to rest.
The statue has a big presence at almost 13 feet tall. One winged arm is spread out to the right and the angel's head is hunched over looking down at the grave below. Iowa City is a big college town, and around the University of Iowa Campus nearly everybody has heard some story about the Black Angel.
Stories that say if you touch it you'll die, if a virgin is kissed by the Black Angel then the statue will turn white. It goes on and on. People say it's been struck by lightning, that it came over on a boat from Europe and fell into the sea, and that the woman who is buried there committed adultery then killed herself.
People leave money and flowers for the angel. He's found bottles of liquor given as offerings, and a lot of people have been married in front of it. Some visitors are convinced that the angel has a curse. In the past three years that he's worked there the only problem with the statue he's had, is that he frequently bumps his head on the wing.
Read also: Techniques of African Jewellery
The True Story of Teresa Feldevert
Terezie Karásek, or the anglicized Teresa, was born in 1835 in the village of Strmilov, Bohemia, which is now in the Czech Republic. When she was 30, she married a doctor from Moravia named František Doležal. Two years later they had their first son, Otto. He died when he was two weeks old.
Soon after this loss, Teresa decided to become a midwife. She got her certificate in Vienna then moved back to her home town where she delivered nearly 100 babies. In her late 30s she had her second son Eduard. When Eduard was four she left her husband and her hometown and she brought her son to America. Why she left? We don't really know.
A lot of people from what was Bohemia and Slovakia ended up in Iowa during that time, to farm and work on the railroad. Teresa moved to a neighborhood in the northern part of Iowa City called Goose Town, where a lot of immigrants from Bohemia ended up. She found midwife work quickly in Iowa City. She was hard working and so was her son Eduard, or Eddie, as he became known. He dreamed of becoming a doctor.
But then Eddie fell ill, and at the age of 18 he got meningitis and died. Teresa had him buried at Oakland cemetery in a crypt. And she had a stone sculpture of a tree cut short made in his honor. This loss forever devastated Teresa.
After Eddie's death Teresa moved around a lot. She went to Chicago. She married a guy in Minnesota, but that didn't work out. She eventually ended up in Eugene, Oregon, where she met her third husband, a German rancher named Nicholas Feldevert. It was his third marriage too and he had also lost his only daughter when she was a child.
Nicholas Feldevert passed away in 1911, and he had no heirs. So after Teresa sold the ranch she inherited all the riches from his estate. Teresa started to send money back to her home town Strmilov for various scholarships and public works projects. This is also when she decided that she wanted to make a monument for her son and late husband, and to setup a place to be a grave for herself someday.
She wanted a bronze sculpture of an angel and replica of the tree trunk on Eddie's crypt to be part of the memorial. She hired a Czech artist, Josef Mario Korbel to do the piece. But he never included the tree trunk. She fought him over payment, but ended up having to pay for a monument that wasn't what she had envisioned.
In 1913 when the statue was put up in Oakland Cemetery, Teresa had her late husbands remains placed beneath it, and she had the tree monument and Eddie's remains moved from the crypt to the angel.
The Color of Bronze
There are a lot of variables that can make a bronze sculpture turn different colors. The patina, environment and metal combination of the alloy. It's actually not that weird. Bronze sculptures, especially those that are not well kept change colors all the time. So that metal combination can change the color.
Legends and Perceptions
Parrott believes you can take away lot about how Teresa felt about all the stories and rumors about the Black Angel based on an interview she did with a reporter from Des Moines, Iowa a few years before she died. Her concern wasn't for the Black Angel. It wasn't about anything except her son and her last husband. She seemed very concerned about people knowing who they were.
Teresa passed away in 1924. On the grave you can see the birth years and death years for her son and husband, but for Teresa it's just her birth year. And that's because she had no heirs to see that it be carved in after she passed away. And though she had the wealth from her estate sent to her home in Strmilov, the citizens of the town would only enjoy the inheritance for less than a decade before the area was taken over by Nazis in 1939. After the occupation the whereabouts of the rest of the money was unknown.
Most of the information about her is so much hearsay. It's so inaccurate. She's certainly not an evil person that turned some statue black. But legends and wild stories live on.
