Young Kwak
Suzan Entwistle Marshall stands above the Spokane River, near where a sculpture will be dedicated to her husband's memory in an unveiling on Saturday, Oct. 27.
In celebration of family and the life of her late husband, Dr. John Marshall, Dr. Suzan Entwistle Marshall will dedicate a sculpture called "We Are Marshall" just off the Centennial Trail on Saturday.
The unveiling is scheduled to take place at 1 pm Oct. 27, near where the Centennial Trail crosses under the Monroe Street Bridge. Entwistle Marshall plans to say a few words, and her two children may read some prayers.
John Marshall, who was the chief surgeon at the Mann-Grandstaff Veterans Affairs Medical Center, died in 2016. While she's dedicated much of her time since then to asking questions about his death, Entwistle Marshall says she'd like Saturday to be a celebration of his life.
"I really want to emphasize tomorrow is just about his life, not his death," she says.
She commissioned and paid artist Richard Warrington, who lives south of Spokane, to create the sculpture, which stands about 6-feet tall and is made from CorTen steel, also known as weathering steel. Warrington sand blasted and treated the sculpture with chlorine so it's already got an aged look, and he says while it's sort of orange now, it'll get darker over time.
The piece was approved by the full Spokane Parks Board and the Joint Arts Committee, which has members from both the parks board and the Spokane Arts Commission.
Warrington says working on the sculpture, which took slightly longer than a month to actually build, has been rewarding.
"It was one of those projects that you really love doing because it’s one that’s going to bring a lot of pleasure to the family and some closure hopefully," Warrington says.
Entwistle Marshall, who hasn't seen the final sculpture, says tears came to her eyes when she saw Warrington's concept.
It depicts an artistic representation of the couple and their children in a family scene that she holds dear to her heart. As a military family, she says their love for each other especially brings up the core comfort feeling of "home."
"It could be every family, which I think is the universal appeal to it," Entwistle Marshall says. "But for me it was the moment frozen in time. If I could just have my life stop at one moment, that would be the moment."
