“My first Boy Scout hike was on Dec. 7, 1941,” Paul R. Christen recalls. He has been an avid supporter of Scouting ever since, and earned the Eagle Scout rank as a youth.
In 1968, Christen was a passenger in a small plane that crashed on takeoff. He and the pilot survived, but were badly injured. Laying in the wreckage, he realized his foot had been severed and hand severely cut.
In a dazed vision, “I saw the old Boy Scout blue handbook from a long time ago,” he recalls “…the page where it talked about tourniquets. I took my tie off and made a tourniquet around my arm (and one) with my belt around my thigh.” Doctors believe his improvised first aid saved his life.
Christen’s pledge of $25 million to Scouting supports the Christen High Adventure Base at “The Summit.”
Mr. Christen as photographed in 2011 standing next to the eigh-foot monumental clay that became the bronze mold; Close-ups show the detail of the Boy Scout Handbook and tourniquet page that saved his life in 1968.
Tom, a hunter, has many friends who enjoy hunting to provide meat for their families as well and when one of them recently tagged out with a buck antelope, they called Tom to come take measurements for us sculpture.
It was important to Tom that the foundry we used in Wyoming to cast this into bronze, Eagle Bronze Foundry, do the patina in real life colors and shades. He wanted the wildlife bronze of the antelope to look like they had just stepped up to the waterhole.
It is a true pleasure to finally have one of Tom’s many public monumental bronze sculptures in his hometown. The sculpture is located in front of the government offices complex of the Town of Prescott Valley in front of the Police Department at the corner of Skoog and Lake Shore. It is along a favorite walking and running path and, thus, is able to be enjoyed by many folks in Prescott Valley.
The sculpture scene is available for recast in life-size and in the tabletop versions. Small wildlife desktop bronzes of the javelina eating cactus are available at Ian Russell Gallery downtown in Prescott Valley and are named “Snack Time” by Tom White. Call for information or to have your own custom wildlife scene for your ranch, farm, town or park designed by Tom.
