'Life' itself: the story behind the iconic sculpture of Jacksonville's Memorial Park
Wayne Wood was just 5 or so when he first confronted Charles Adrian Pillars' masterpiece of a sculpture, looming over him at Memorial Park on the Jacksonville riverfront.
Cast in bronze, designed to honor those from Florida who died in the horror of World War I, the sculpture portrays a nude, winged male figure. He's poised on one foot atop a stylized globe, holding an olive branch out to the sky. Below him rise the shapes of partial human figures, women and children, as if struggling to come out of the chaos of the world.
It's called "Life."
Visiting his grandmother in Riverside, up from his home in Belle Glade, the young Wood was terrified by the size and scope of the sculpture. He might even have cried.
His appreciation of it grew, though, as he did, particularly after he moved to Jacksonville's Riverside neighborhood to make a life of his own, not far from the Olmstead brothers-designed park where the sculpture rises up near the St. Johns River.
Some 70 years later, he's completed a sweeping book on the often-troubled artist behind the iconic work.
"Everything in this story is true, mostly," Wood writes in his preface to "Life: The Untold Story of Charles Adrian Pillars."
At its center is a brilliant artist who struggled to find success, in his life and his work, but who left behind works of real accomplishment.
"Every time he had a peak, he went into a valley. … That was the basic skeleton of the story," Wood said.
"A great story"
Born in 1870 in smalltown Illinois, Pillars was humorless — or at least Wood could find no evidence of a sense of humor about him — and driven, with a bad temper and a tendency to nurse grudges.
But Wood was drawn to his story, of an artist who suffered through grueling poverty and found sudden wealth, and lost it all again. Odd bits of Jacksonville history pop up throughout his story as do prominent citizens of Jacksonville — including businessman Arthur Cummer, whose yacht rescued the desperate Pillars as he floundered in the St. Johns, where he'd been driven by the Great Fire of 1901.
"The story has attempted murder, debauchery, nudity, the greatest insurance fraud case in the history of Florida, seven major fires, love, jubilation, rage, great success, great failure," Wood said. "It's got the arc of a great story."
Pillars, who was known as Charlie before Jacksonville architect Henry Klutho persuaded him he needed a more serious name, was immensely talented.
That much was evident at a young age, when he left home as a teen to become the protege of renowned sculptors in Chicago. While barely in his 20s, he worked on major projects for the World's Fair of 1893.
He came to Jacksonville in 1894, where he had some family. It was warm, it was the biggest city in the state, and Pillars had grand ambitions to become the leading sculptor in a place lacking great artists.
It wasn't that easy. Commissions were scarce, and he and his family were often broke, often delinquent on rent and often on the move from one modest home to another.
Pillars' mark on Jacksonville
Success did come, occasionally. Two of his works have been seen by generations of tourists: Pillars made Florida's statues for the National Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol of John Gorrie, inventor of air-conditioning, and Edmund Kirby Smith, Confederate general (Kirby Smith's has since been removed).
He also designed the Ribault Monument, which now stands atop St. Johns Bluff at Fort Caroline National Monument, among other works.
And when the citizens of Jacksonville wanted to honor those who had died in the Great War, Pillars got the call.
Pushed by patron Ninah Cummer to make it more daring, more artistic, Pillars — who by then was living in St. Augustine — came up with his masterpiece. It's known as "Spiritualized Life and Winged Victory," but its plaque just says "Life."
It's brilliant, Wood said, not just in its artistic merit but also in how it's engineered, with its huge, winged young man poised on one toe atop the globe. "And the innocent women and children reaching up to this youth, rising above all this chaos, for some resolution — the faces are just remarkable," Wood said.
His book "Life" was released in late November, for sale at local bookstores and through its publisher, the Jacksonville Historical Society (jaxhistory.org).
Over ten years of intensive research
Wood, who turns 75 this month, is a retired optometrist turned historian. He's written 13 previous books on the city's history, including "Jacksonville's Architectural Heritage." He is founder of Riverside Avondale Preservation — whose logo incorporates the image of Pillars' sculpture — and the Riverside Arts Market.
He called "Life" his most thoroughly researched work, coming at more than 400 pages, including numerous photos and an extensive bibliography.
He wrote it over 10 years, going through microfilm of old newspapers, through city directories and maps and scholarly books. Dianne Taylor, who wrote about Pillars for her master's degree thesis at the University of Florida, is listed as contributing editor.
Wood's research also took him into the most everyday details of life a century or more ago in Jacksonville and Chicago, St. Augustine and Sarasota, all places where Pillars lived and worked. (In Sarasota, where he taught at an art school affiliated with circus magnate John Ringling, he became friends with the world's second-tallest man and a woman said to be the fattest on Earth.)
"It's a story, not just a historical treatise," Wood said. "In order to make it credible, I needed to know details that might not seem necessary. When I walked down the street, what did it look like? Was it paved or unpaved, or covered with bricks? How much did the streetcar cost? What was the color of the streetcar?"
Wood said he wanted to capture all those details, to help capture the life of Pillars, whose sculpture was unveiled to a crowd of hundreds on a gray Christmas Day in 1924.
"There was loud applause and cheering," Wood wrote of that day, "followed by murmurs among the audience members about the unabashed nudity of the young man atop the globe as well as the people struggling in its turbulent waters. The initial prudish whispers quickly gave way to a collective sense of awe at the stunning beauty of the statue, silhouetted against the roiling gray clouds."
Wood is still struck by the beauty of Pillars' work, which became even more iconic after it was captured in widely seen images, rising above the wind-lashed floodwaters of Hurricane Irma in 2017.
"That was horrifying and breathtaking," Wood said. "And disappointing that I wasn't down there to take a picture of it."