When the life-size bronze sculpture of the late Bruce Duchossois, his horse, Kim’s Song, and his dog, Chummy, was unveiled Friday afternoon, there was a special four-legged guest.
The real Chummy was at the Aiken Horse Park Foundation’s Bruce’s Field for the short ceremony. And when members of Duchossois’ family and Horse Park Foundation President Jack Wetzel posed for photos with the statue, Chummy was in Wetzel’s arms.
“Chummy was at a farm west of Wellington, Florida that raised pit bulls,” said Wetzel, who talked about the shaggy little dog’s story. “They put him in a harness and dropped him into a pen with pit bulls so the pit bulls could learn to bite and tear. Bruce heard about it, and he went and rescued Chummy and shut down the farm. Chummy used to sleep with Bruce every night and now he sleeps in Bruce’s bedroom.”
In the sculpture, a smiling Duchossois is holding a shank attached to Kim’s Song’s bridle in his right hand and Chummy is tucked under his left arm.
“I love it,” said Wetzel, who was Duchossois’ partner for many years. “I looked at the work of eight different sculptors, and I chose Maria Kirby-Smith of Camden. She did a wonderful job.”
During the creation process, Kirby-Smith first made the figures out of clay, and Wetzel offered his advice.
“I went up there every Thursday for a few months,” Wetzel said. “She had never met Bruce, and I took her photos and paintings of him. I would stand there looking at him, and I even worked on his face with a knife.”
Kirby-Smith was grateful for Wetzel’s input.
“I couldn’t have gotten it done without his guidance and keen observations,” she said. “He kept pushing me closer to the mark. He knew that face for more than 30 years, and at one point, I did kind of give him the tool and he worked on the cheeks.”
Kirby-Smith’s priority was to depict Duchossois and his animals accurately, but she also wanted the sculpture to be something more.
“If I’ve done my job, it transcends being just portrait; that’s something that we all strive for as artists,” Kirby-Smith said. “I wanted to show his (Duchossois’) communion with his fellow creatures – the tenderness, the kindness and the trust. It should be sort of like a moment when you got back to Eden.”
Duchossois’ 95-year-old father, Richard Duchossois, was at Bruce’s Field for the unveiling, and Kirby-Smith was nervous because she was really hoping that he would be happy with her work.
But when the tarp was pulled off the statue, Kirby-Smith said she couldn’t see Richard’s reaction so she wasn’t sure what he thought.
But while standing in the Aiken Charity Horse Shows’ VIP tent afterward, the elder Duchossois, gave a positive review.
“It is magnificent,” Richard said. “Bruce and his mother (the late Beverly Duchossois) both would be very, very proud, and I know they are looking down and can see it. Kim’s Song was Bruce’s favorite horse, Chummy was his favorite puppy and Bruce had a smile on his face. I very seldom saw Bruce without a smile. Everybody in Aiken was so wonderful to him. This was the place that he really called home. His second home was in Florida, and his third home was in Barrington (in Illinois).”
Also at the unveiling were Bruce’s two sisters, Dayle Duchossios-Fortino and Kim Duchossois.
“It was up to Jack and I to give the final approval, and I saw it (the sculpture) when Bruce was still made of clay, before they poured the bronze at the foundry in Florida,” Duchossois-Fortino said. “We are really pleased. We wanted to just right for my dad. Bruce would have loved how it turned out. He is where he wanted to be with his friends and his animals and he is wearing casual clothes.”
In conjunction with the unveiling, the $15,000 United States Hunter Jumper Association International Hunter Derby was held in Bruce’s honor.
Bruce died in July 2014 before the construction began to turn Bruce’s Field, which was named in his honor, into a major equestrian center. He had purchased the property in 2000 to save it from residential development. Later, Bruce established the Horse Park Foundation to make sure his vision for a state-of-the-art horse show facility with an old-fashioned atmosphere was carried out.
Kim’s Song won an American Horse Shows Association Horse of the Year title in the 1970s. Bruce was a one of the country’s leading exhibitors in the adult amateur hunter division, and in the spring of 2014, he was inducted into the National Show Hunter Hall of Fame.
Last summer, Phillip Dutton won an individual bronze medal in eventing on a horse once owned by Bruce, Mighty Nice, during the Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
“Bruce was a very good horseman, and he was full of energy,” said former South Carolina State Sen. Michael Laughlin. “He also was a nice guy who would help anybody out.”
