A larger-than-life statue of football great Bronko Nagurski now stands prominently outside the Koochiching Historical and Bronko Nagurski Museums in International Falls.
Workers on Thursday installed the statue that had previously been on display inside the University of Minnesota’s Gibson-Nagurski Football Complex.
“We got a call from the University of Minnesota Athletic Department asking us if we wanted this statue,” said Koochiching Museums Executive Director Ed Oerichbauer. “We, of course, said ‘Yes.’ That was back in 2010.
“So, it’s been an exercise in figuring out how to get it up here and where we were going to put it, and so forth, ever since that time.”
Upon the Gibson-Nagurski building’s recent renovation, Oerichbauer said the statue became “surplus” at the University of Minnesota when the decision was made not to put it back into the building.
He said the assistance of a grant from Boise provided an opportunity to bring the statue up to the Falls.
Nagurski played football in the Falls and at the University of Minnesota in the 1920s before playing professionally with the Chicago Bears. He is a member of both the College Football Hall of Fame and Pro Football Hall of Fame and was also among the first nine inductees into the Bronco Athletic Hall of Fame.
When the statue had previously been on display, Oerichbauer said it stood on an 8-foot base that rotated 360 degrees.
“The whole piece is 21 feet tall,” he said. “We don’t have a building in International Falls that has a 21-foot ceiling where we could put this.”
Instead of having the rotating base, which included the University of Minnesota’s logo, the statue was bolted on a plate attached to the sidewalk outside the museums.
To display the statue outside, Oerichbauer said a 4-foot fence will surround it, along with the application of a coat of epoxy to the statue itself.
He said the statue arrived in the Falls earlier in May and had been in storage at the county shop, prior to being brought on a flatbed truck to the museums for installation Thursday.
