Ed Rose, who created what became a controversial statue of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., died April 26 at his home in Loganville, Ga. He was 64 and had suffered from heart problems.
Rose's statue of King and Emmett Till, a black youth who was lynched in 1955, was in Denver's City Park for about two decades, beginning in 1976, before being moved to storage. In 2002, the sheetmetal and bronze statue was moved to the Martin Luther King Jr. Museum and Cultural Center in Pueblo.
Rose was philosophical about his statue being stored in the basement of the Denver Art Museum, said his daughter, Tasha Fenton of Denver.
"He said, 'Well, I always wanted my work to be at the Denver Art Museum,' " she said.
Before that, there was a long-running dispute about payment for the statue because members of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Foundation, which had commissioned it, said Rose's work didn't look like King. Many complained that King's head was too large for his body.
Rose sued the foundation and eventually was paid the $35,000 due.
At one point, the president of the New York firm that cast the statue threatened to "come out there and chop it down or sell it at an auction" unless he was paid, according to a 1977 Denver Post story.
Part of the problem was that the Memorial Foundation raised far less money than planned, said Rose's son, Edwin Rose IV of Aurora.
A second statue of King, which includes depictions of Mohandas Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass beneath the King figure, done by Ed Dwight, was put in City Park in 2002.
At the time it was dedicated, Dwight told The Denver Post that, in fact, King had a "larger-than-normal head" for his height, and Dwight maintained that in his work.
Rose did other sculptures for banks and restaurants, many of them abstract designs, and often exhibited his work at arts festivals.
"He always hoped to be a full-time artist," said his son.
Edwin Rose III was born in Baltimore on Jan. 21, 1945, and graduated from high school in Beaver, Pa. He got a football scholarship to the University of Wyoming but hurt his knee and left there to continue his studies at Northeastern Junior College in Sterling.
He worked for IBM and StorageTek in computer analysis, his family said.
He married Dorothy Yellock in 1965.They divorced in 1971. In 1992, he married Nenita Salango. In addition to his wife, ex-wife, son and daughter, he is survived by another daughter, Marisha Rose of Loganville, and three grandchildren.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or email@example.com