SPOTLIGHT
Michael Moffett
by Jessica Berger Pirani
In 2007 , Military Times reported that on average , 22 American veterans commit suicide daily . Michael Moffett cited this statistic in the fi rst three minutes of our conversation .
He remembered the night he was called out of his foxhole ; Moffett ’ s CO came to say he was wanted at HQ , so the kid humped through the dark jungle and over wet terrain to the bunker a mile away . It was ’ 69 , hostilities were ramping up , and the chaplain who was there said with brass , “ Your mom wants to talk to you on the phone .” She told him to come home because his dad wasn ’ t well . The CO said a chopper would bring him to Da Nang in the morning . Several days later , he was on Merritt Island , Florida by his dad ’ s bedside in their family home . He visited for a minute , then went to take a nap , “’ cause I was dead tired ,” and woke up — but his dad never did . Sobbing , Moffett refl ects , “ He waited for me .”
In 1980 , a Today reporter quoted him saying that combat experience is something he always carries and it comes out continuously through his art . “ I don ’ t think about it as therapy , this is just what I do . It ’ s what motivates me to get out of bed .”
“ When I came back from Vietnam , I was so disconnected from my high school friends .”
The draft was a classist perpetrator . If a family could afford auxiliary schooling , their child avoided jungle massacres . “ They don ’ t get it ,” he said of his white classmates with a lot of bread who never saw shit .
After attending Ringling College of Art and Design for two years of artistic education courtesy of the GI bill , he worked welding the massive machinery that steams agri-business ’ growth . Just something to make money .
He started a bronze foundry partly for the studio space and did spot welding to help pay the bills .
Along the way , Moffett became friends with a councilman in Cocoa Beach , Florida , who commissioned a bronze drinking fountain for their park as public art , stipulating only that “ it couldn ’ t be phallic .” Michael created his Fountainhead , around which the municipality organized an art festival , whose centerpiece was the fountain ’ s unveiling
Portable War Memorial , sculpture
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