Johnny Cash’s Family Reacts As Statue In His Honor Is Unveiled At U.S. Capitol
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After a months-long wait, a statue of Arkansas native and country music legend Johnny Cash was unveiled at the United States Capitol.
Members of Johnny Cash’s family, including his sister Joanne, daughters Rosanne, Tara, Cindy, and Kathy, and stepdaughter Carlene Carter, were on-hand to witness the unveiling of an 8-foot-tall bronze statue in the Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Arkansas sculptor Kevin Kresse created the stunning likeness of The Man in Black. Kresse arrived in Washington ahead of the ceremony to help install the sculpture, a process that he says took six hours! With the statue, Cash became the first musician to be honored in the hallowed hall that includes two statues representing each of the United States.
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The ceremony was a years-long process for Kresse who completed the project in late 2022. After receiving news that the “Sculpture, Pedestal, Inscriptions, Engineering, etc.” had been approved, Kresse and his team worked tirelessly to make sure every detail was taken care of, including finding a 4,000-pound Arkansas stone to use for the pedestal.
The labor of love was worth it for Kresse who stood near Johnny Cash’s family as they unveiled the statue Tuesday morning (September 24).
Cash’s family was clearly moved, some of them even emotional, as they saw the statue in all of its glory displayed. Perhaps the most moving part of the ceremony was the reaction of Johnny’s sister, Joanne, who laid her hand on the statue as she looked at it, almost as if it was her brother brought back to life.
Cash’s daughters also appeared emotional as they took in the magnificence of their dad’s likeness.
An Arkansas delegation was in attendance to show support for Johnny Cash’s family, Little Rock native Kevin Kresse, and to show their state pride on behalf of the country music legend.
Governor Sara Huckabee Sanders addressed the crowd to pay tribute to the “I Walk The Line” singer, saying:
“To just about every musical family in the south, after God and country, came Johnny Cash. Even more than his songs, it’s the image of the man I remember. The slicked-back hair of his early albums, and the seasoned look of his later years. Perhaps the most iconic, the pictures of Cash at San Quentin and Folsom Prison,” Sanders said. “Johnny Cash was open about the struggles and the triumphs of his life. He was a hymn-singing Christian, but there were also times he wrote that he felt like a walking vision of death. But that didn’t contradict his image. It was his image.”
Johnny Cash’s daughter, Roseanne, also spoke at the ceremony, and gave special recognition to her aunt, Joanne, “The last surviving member of the original Cash family from Dyess, Arkansas.” Roseanne told the crowd that Joanne has lost her sight and asked to touch the statue so she could “feel what it was.”
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Roseanne delivered a profound speech in honor of her late father, and remembered him as a “humble, kind, and compassionate man” who was also a true patriot.
“He was a patriot in the true sense of the word. He loved the physical contours of America, and he knew every state intimately. But most of all he loved the idea of America as a place of dreams and refuge, freedom and wonder,” Roseanne recalled. “He wrote my mother when he was in the Air Force that he loved ‘the very rock and soil of the fields where he grew up.’ And those rocks, that soil, the river, the floods, the hard times, and the radio at the end of a long day, which pulled him towards his future, they all showed up cinematically in his lyrics.”
Watch the emotional unveiling of Johnny Cash’s statue at the U.S. Capitol in the video below.
