The Virginia Informer

Nooks & Crannies of William and Mary:

   Tina, Johnny, J. Seward, and Legend of the Bronze Letter

By R.C. Rasmus, Arts & Entertainment Editor

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            “Two new students at the College spend 24 hours a day reading and studying. They never leave the campus, and they will never graduate.”

            Those words were printed twenty-six years ago in the William and Mary News. The May 29, 1979 issue featured a story about a bronze sculpture that has become a bizarre out-of-the-way fixture on our campus entitled “Spring.”  Most people find the statue unsettling, and many just refer to it as “those weird metal kids by the Sunken Gardens.” Even back in the 1970’s, William and Mary students considered the sculpture to be “a little spooky”.

            What makes us so nervous about Tina and her brother? They’re so lifelike. Every strand of Tina’s hair is visible, the wrinkles in her brother’s pants are easy to make out, and the old radio at their feet has knobs and dials that you want to reach out and turn. Plus, they aren’t up on some pedestal. They’re sitting right there on the ground, like any other students, waiting for a conversation.

            The sculpture’s creator, J. Seward Johnson Jr., is famous for this meticulous approach to art. Johnson, a wealthy grandson of the founder of the Johnson & Johnson Company, took up sculpting at age 41 after a failed stint at the family business. He began sculpting what he calls “mini-heroics,”: extremely lifelike ordinary people doing ordinary things. According to Time Magazine, people have called the cops on a few of the statues for loitering. Other Johnson pieces have had sweaters and scarves put on them in winter, and have been on the receiving end of long, one-sided conversations. At William and Mary, students often form study circles with the brother and sister, or lay on Tina’s lap.

            Johnson uses a revolutionary method to create this illusion of reality, initially fashioning a ten-inch figure that is eventually sculpted as a life-sized nude. Then, a full-time seamstress is called in to stitch clothes onto the figures. Finally, the figures are sprayed with a stiffening resin before being cast in bronze. Johnson’s painstaking process has made his pieces very desirable, and according to some figures the College’s “Spring” is now worth upwards of $1 million.

            The sculpture raises all sorts of questions. Who is that guy sitting next to Tina? Is it really her brother? Is it, as the William and Mary News alluded to, Johnny, the guy who wrote Tina’s love letter? Or perhaps it’s something a bit more sensational. Campus legend has it that the male figure is in fact philandering with Tina while her boyfriend Johnny is away. We’ll never know: Johnson never revealed these secrets.

            The bronze letter in Tina’s hands also alludes to mystery. It is a love letter from her boyfriend Johnny, telling her how much he likes her and how he hopes that they never break up. However, Tina only holds half of Johnny’s letter. What happened to the other half?

            One legend suggests that the letter was split in half during the 1980s; the bottom half stayed here while the top was shipped to Britain. It is rumored that a statue of Jimmy resides on another college campus. He is dressed in a World War II GI’s uniform, holding the second half of the love letter. This should be easy to verify, but it is not.

            I started asking around. My Freshman Orientation Aide, who originally told me the legend, couldn’t authenticate it for me. She said that it was just a story that she was told during her own orientation. A tour guide at Wren couldn’t verify it either. In turn, I went to the faculty, the library, and even the archival records about the statue, but no one could tell me whether the legend was true or not. Over the course of two weeks, the closest that I came to getting an answer came from a member of the administration. She asked not to be quoted, but said that if she remembered correctly the statue had been vandalized several times and repaired, once by the artist himself. She said that it was possible that the vandalism may have started up the campus rumor mill.

            Her memories were eventually corroborated by Mr. Bill Barker, the registrar at the Muscarelle Museum of Art on campus. He found the files on “Spring,” and reported that the sculpture had indeed been damaged twice, once in 1988 and again in 1992. The first time, the broken letter was simply glued back together. The second time, the statue was never repaired. Barker said that none of the museum’s files mentioned what happened to the missing part of Tina’s letter.

            So for now, the jury is out on the legend. Could someone have stolen the top of the letter in 1992 and taken it somewhere else? Until someone comes up with the real answer, we’ll have to entrust Tina and her bronze letter to the domain of campus mystery.

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