Arkansas’ Johnny Cash statue on the way to Washington D.C.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – The likeness of Johnny Cash set to live in the U.S. Capitol’s statuary hall is now on its way to D.C.

The bronze statue of Arkansas-born Cash will join another recent addition to the space; Daisy Gatson Bates, who was placed there earlier this year as Arkansas’ newest representation.

“Our hope is that it will encourage people from all around the world who tour the U.S. Capitol to want to come and visit Arkansas,” Arkansas National Statuary Hall Steering Committee Chair Shane Broadway explained.

Broadway noted that some four million visitors stop by the Capitol per year.

An 18-wheeler carrying the heavily packaged statue of Cash pulled out of Little Rock this morning, but not without ceremony. The send-off ended the five-year process of getting The Man in Black to Washington, bringing in Cash’s Arkansas relatives from Kingsland and the statue’s artist, Kevin Kresse.

“It creeps in occasionally and it does hit me,” Kresse explained when asked about the magnitude of the project. “When he’s fully inside the Capitol safely put together, then I can fully take a deep breath.”

Kresse spent three years working on the statue, starting with a clay base and finishing with a bronze cast set atop a stone pedestal; a pedestal covered in Arkansas natural resources.

“I’m very proud that I’m from Arkansas and doing this piece and that the stone is from Arkansas, that it’s very much an Arkansas product,” Kresse said.

Something else based in the Natural State is the company that’s taking Johnny to Washington. Dedicated Logistics of Crossett is, as Broadway explained, “a veteran carrying a veteran and south Arkansas transporting a south Arkansas guy.”

Johnny’s statue will arrive in Maryland on Monday and will stay covered up until his grand unveiling in Statuary Hall on Sept. 24.

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