Once in a lifetime!

Many years ago, in Little Rock Arkansas, we stumbled across a mammoth wooden carving of a native American outside the Arkansas Art Center. We learned that the sculptor was Peter Wolf Toth, a Hungarian born (1947) who emigrated to the US. He set out on a mission to create a Whispering Giant in every US state, and ultimately has created 74 such sculptures, donating one or more for display in each state. Since that day, we have seen 21 Whispering Giants, but have also seen several empty pedestals where termites or other pests have destroyed these monuments. We had read that Mr. Toth had been doing some repair work lately in New Orleans and Johnson City Tennessee. To our great surprise, we drove up to the see Sequoya outside the Cherokee Indian Museum in Cherokee North Carolina, and there, doing some repair and refurbishing on Sequoya, was Peter Wolf Toth himself – triple bonus!

Not believing my eyes, I introduced myself and asked “Are you by chance Mr. Toth?” He said “No – my dad is Mr. Toth – I am Peter.” After being appropriately chastised, we spent the next half hour talking about his work, telling him about all of his work we had seen before, and just generally chatting in the shadow of Sequoya about his plans. His most current goal was to place one of his Whispering Giants along the Amazon. He had raised nearly all the money he needed to tackle this, and was now looking for the window of opportunity.

He asked where our travels would take us. We mentioned to him we were going to search out his work in New Orleans, and he gave us some directions to assist. We told him that our immediate plans were to drive today to Johnson City Tennessee to see Junaluska. When we asked, he confirmed that he had worked on this Whispering Giant last year, adding some feathers on a horizontal plane, and adding some color to the sculpture. When we got there, both the Woman and I were big fans of the improvements he had made. In the meantime, I had to head to a gas station to buy a Powerball ticket – if we can just bump into Peter Wolf Toth, we must be on a lucky streak!

Talk to you soon.