The Kennedy Angel?

[Andrew Prutsok]

Was browsing through a bound newspaper volume from 1963 and noticed in February a wire story out of Detroit on a sculpture that was uncovered in a Detroit church basement. It depicted an angel that JFK had posed for when he was a student at Harvard. It was done in the 1930s by a sculptor named Mrs. John C. Wiley. The family was a friend of the Kennedys, apparently. It was sculpted in Latvia while JFK was there on a visit. It was intended to be installed at a church in Antwerp, but the Nazis had overrun it by the time it was finished. It was apparently sent to Rome and then sometime later to a Detroit. The sculpture was placed at Maryglade College in Memphis, Mich. The school closed in 1972 and all I could find online was that the sculpture was removed when the school closed. Can't find anything else about it. My interest is piqued. Hoping somebody knows what became of it and whether an image exists.

Edited July 26, 2019 by Andrew Prutsok