DAYTONA BEACH About four years after setting out on the journey to create a sculpture of Mary McLeod Bethune that would one day stand in the U.S. Capitol s Statuary Hall, the marble likeness of the trailblazing educator and civil rights activist is just a few weeks away from completion.
Master sculptor Nilda Comas has been toiling in her artists studio in the Italian hamlet of Pietrasanta, first creating smaller clay and plaster models in preparation for chiseling out a statue of Bethune from a 4-ton block of marble.
Now Comas is putting the finishing touches on the 11-foot-tall white marble statue of the woman who created a school for girls in Daytona Beach in 1904 that evolved into Bethune-Cookman University.