The charging ram ornament on the hood of Dodge trucks and the statue at the north end of Esther Short Park have something in common — Avard Fairbanks, who shaped both. During his 80-year career, the Utahan created 100 public monuments.
In 1911, the New York Art Students League awarded Fairbanks, then 13, a scholarship. In 1913, he became the youngest student attending the Ecole National Supérieure in Paris. Later he went on to the University of Michigan Medical School to earn a doctorate in anatomical studies, which he applied to his art.
In 1920, he obtained an assistant professor of art position at the University of Oregon. He left to study in Europe under a Guggenheim Fellowship. Returning in 1928 to the Pacific Northwest, he taught at the Seattle Art Museum. About the same time, he began work on the Pioneer Mother Memorial at the request of a Vancouver banker and his wife.
Fairbanks’ flowing bronze shows a forward-facing woman wearing a long dress, shawl and shoes. Her face appears weary but determined. Her right shoulder sags below her left, suggesting the rifle’s heft in her right hand or that she’s leaning on it to rest. Her son faces forward, clinging to her leg.
On the left side stand two daughters. The mother’s left hand rests on the tallest as the shorter daughter faces inward, looking into the face her taller sister. All the children touch their mother, and her posture suggests her protectiveness of the children and their reliance on her. Yet the mother’s forward right leg gives the impression she’s just paused momentarily or is about to move.
Although the park honors Esther Short and her family for their contributions to the city, the statue represents a less personal and broader perspective of Northwest settlement by emphasizing women and their strenuous trek west while holding their families together.
The back of the monument supports that interpretation, for it reads, “erected in memory of pioneer mothers,” of whom Esther Short was but one. It also verifies Fairbanks as the artist and reminds the viewer that Mr. and Mrs. Edward Crawford commissioned the work and donated $10,000 toward it.
The Crawford family contributed much to Clark County’s history. One of the sons of Peter Crawford, Edward was the president of a lumber company, vice president of the Lumberman’s National Bank and a former Vancouver mayor.
His father surveyed Southwest Washington and was elected surveyor of Vancouver in 1883 and Clark County in 1884. In 1845, Peter Crawford helped Henry Williamson plat Vancouver City. When overlapping claims of the barracks, the Shorts and the St. James Mission needed sorting out, Peter Crawford’s knowledge of local surveys help determine who owned what.
In the 1930s, Fairbanks turned briefly to sleekly shaped radiator ornaments. His most famous is the charging ram for Dodge, and variations of it are still used today. He created two more, the winged mermaid for Plymouth and the griffin for Hudson. Eighty years later, collectors still buy and trade them.
Martin Middlewood is editor of the Clark County Historical Society Annual. Reach him at ClarkCoHist@gmail.com.
