They put up a statue of John Breaux the other day in Louisville in a little square just south of the library and a little left of the old tavern, a year to the day after the man died.
Close to 200 people, at least by my count, showed up in the cold that Saturday morning. Very few knew him much better than I had, which was mostly waving as I drove past him and his bicycle, maybe a brief hello as I walked out of the supermarket and he swept or picked up trash.
Very few in the crowd, again by my count, did not cry at some point that morning. A man a year gone — a nobody, really, hardly a war hero, never elected to anything — and still they put up a statue.
The mayor, Chuck Sisk, told those gathered stories of the man and said the little park just off Main Street, not far from where Breaux lived with his brother, will be named John Breaux Memorial Plaza.
On loudspeakers set up in front of the statue, they played two songs people had written about Breaux in the year since he died. People cried. When they pulled off the sheet covering the statue, people gasped. And they cried some more.
It is a bronzed rendering of the man straddling his bicycle, a broad smile on a face that is turned over one shoulder. His hand is raised high in the air, waving.
“That is his actual bicycle, bronzed,” said the sculptor, Dawn Record, who created the statue free of charge.
She wanted to do something, anything, she said, standing amid the crowd of people admiring her work. After he died, she said, she at first thought of organizing a bike ride in his memory. A bicycle, after all, is how she and everyone else recognized him.
She quickly discovered the idea had been taken. Oddly, she had not thought of a statue until days after the memorial service, when people began talking of it as a way to always remember John Breaux.
Ecstatic, his family gave her dozens of color photographs. She picked one of him straddling his bike and went to work last May.
“It feels weird not to have John in my studio anymore,” she said. “I guess you could say I miss him.”
He was 57 years old when he died. He was a town over, just off U.S. 287 in Lafayette, when a woman lost control of her car and ran over John Breaux as he picked up trash on the side of the road.
I have lived in many places and towns, yet seldom have I witnessed such an outpouring of grief as on that day.
He was always around, impossible to miss, really, either at the bowling alley, the supermarket or, more often, on the streets of the two small towns where he rode his bicycle, its handlebars outfitted with bulging bags of trash. He never failed to offer a friendly wave.
It is quite appropriate, if you ask me, that they erected a statue of him. Even before he died, people around here called John Breaux an angel.
The teenagers used to call him Jesus.
He was such an unselfishly kind, caring and gentle soul, I do not know, honestly, if they were wrong on either count.
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
