Panel chooses Edison for Statuary Hall honor

COLUMBUS - Prolific inventor Thomas Alva Edison on Thursday received the unanimous recommendation of a legislative panel to stand for Ohio in the National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol.

The committee honored the choice of 30 percent of those Ohioans who participated in recent balloting despite a late push for the flight-pioneering Wright Brothers. Among other things, Edison is credited with inventing or perfecting the phonograph and incandescent light bulb.

"It was an extraordinarily difficult decision given how important Ohio is not only to our country, but to

the world," said Sen. Mark Wagoner (R., Ottawa Hills), who chaired the joint Senate-House panel.

"Ohio lays claim to six presidents,'' he said. "Ohio has astronauts. We have scientists. We have inventors. We have people who changed the world with might and people who changed the world with the stroke of a pen."

The final decision will be made by the General Assembly, which plans to replace its statue of Gov. William Allen, a mid-19th Century Democratic governor and congressman from Chillicothe. His views tolerating slavery and opposing the Civil War and President Lincoln were shared by many Ohioans in his day, but have not worn well over time.

Ohio's statue of assassinated Republican President James Garfield will remain in place.

When the dust finally settled from recounts of the public vote supervised by the Ohio Historical Society, Edison scored 14,833, or 30 percent of the 48,736 ballots cast. The Wrights received 13,815, or 28 percent.

A newly created nonprofit organization would decide what the statue would look like, what it would be made of, and how private funds would be raised to pay for it.

No last-minute pitches were permitted, but U.S. Reps. Bob Latta (R., Bowling Green) and Mike Turner (R., Dayton) sent dueling letters lobbying for local favorites.

"The achievement of flight, through the determination and innovation of the Wright Brothers, changed our world forever and made it smaller, bringing together families, cultures, and faraway places, and it all began in Dayton, Ohio," Mr. Turner wrote. "The Wrights are Ohio sons."

His letter did not mention Edison, but he noted, "The Wrights called Ohio home all their lives.'' Among the arguments that have been used against Edison is the fact that, while born in Milan, he left Ohio to pursue his work.

"Milan was always Edison's hometown,'' Mr. Latta wrote. "Edison kept in touch with the schoolchildren in Milan, visiting them regularly and corresponding with them through letters. He purchased his birthplace in Milan, which his wife and daughter established as the Edison Birthplace Museum, and it is still open to the public in Milan.''

Sen. Teresa Fedor (D., Toledo) made the motion to recommend Edison out of respect for the public vote, but noted he was not her first choice.

"I really wanted Harriet Beecher Stowe,'' she said, referring to the author whose experiences in Cincinnati led to the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, which influenced the nation's view of slavery.

The only other contender from northwest Ohio, James Mitchell Ashley, placed last among the 10 finalists in the public votes. The Toledo congressman helped Lincoln usher the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery through Congress.

The other finalists were black track star Jesse Owens, whose Olympic gold mocked Nazi-era racial propaganda, congressman and civil rights leader William McCulloch, Civil War general and President Ulysses S. Grant, women's suffragist Harriet Taylor Upton, Challenger astronaut Judith Resnik, and oral polio vaccine inventor Albert A. Sabin.

Contact Jim Provance at:

jprovance@theblade.com

or 614-221-0496.