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In Memory

Gary Ginther - Class Of 1965

McCOOK, Neb. — Gary Ginther, McCook's premier sculptor and the master of bison in bronze, died Christmas Day. He was 71 years old. In life, and now in death, Gary Ginther was a gentle free spirit. Ginther was diagnosed with cancer just three months ago, and was undergoing radiation treatments in Denver. While cancer took the man, the art, spirit and touch of Gary Ginther will live on, forever in indelible bronze, pewter, fiberglas and resin. Gary Ginther at work on one of his creations. Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Gazette Ginther was possibly best-known outside of his hometown of McCook for the larger-than-life bronze bison bull sculptures he created for the "Ted's Montana Grill" restaurant chain of television mogul and Nebraska bison rancher Ted Turner, and for the pewter Sandhill crane sculptures he made for the Museum of Nebraska Art in Kearney, Rowe Sanctuary at Gibbon, Prairie Winds Art Gallery in Grand Island and Star-Spangled West! at Eppley Airport in Omaha. It's a massive Ginther bison that welcomes visitors to the Great Platte River Road Archway on Interstate 80 near Kearney. Gary's sculpture of a pronghorn antelope became the blank fiberglas canvas for Rawlins, Wyoming's “Pronghorn Pride” street art project, and his five-foot-tall American eagle was the canvas for the "Eagles in Paradise" street art project on Santa Catalina Island in California. Ginther sculpted an overall-clad attendant for Ogallala's restored 1920's Spruce Street gas station and now visitors center, and a rider on horseback for the Pony Express station in Gothenburg. Ginther's fiberglas dimetrodon, "giant lizard," is on display in the Las Vegas Natural History Museum. Gary lived and worked in a log cabin studio on the shore of Cambridge Lake, and three young boys in bronze play a perpetual game of sandlot baseball in the city park of Cambridge. Back home in McCook, Gary has installed sculptures of bison, a soldier and a U.S. senator. "Tatanka," or "Prairie Bull," rests on the front lawn of the historic Carnegie Library in downtown McCook. Inside the adjacent High Plains Museum, Gary's World War I "Doughboy" in resin stands at attention beside the American flag. A bronze sculpture of U.S. Sen. George W. Norris, a collaboration with fellow McCook sculptor Jon Leitner, sits on a park bench in front of the Senator's McCook home and museum on Norris Avenue. Gary helped with the ongoing restoration of the historic Fox Theater in downtown McCook when he made a mold from the original stars on the facade of the theater, then damaged, aged and fallen, and poured 25 new stars and four spares. Gary and fellow graduates of McCook High School's Class of 1965 installed Gary's charging bison sculpture, "Bison Stampede," in the front lobby of MHS in August. Maybe Gary's dream of a "touchstone" bison — a large bas relief bison mounted on the wall of the gym for basketball and volleyball players and wrestlers to touch for luck before competition — can become someone else's dream now. At the front door of Bison Dental is Gary's bas relief bison, installed there by his close friend and classmate, Dr. Warren Jones. Warren said this morning that he and Gary have been best friends since the first days of fifth grade — "when he took me down and showed me his was tougher than me," Warren chuckled. Warren said that Gary was always artistic, and was disqualified from a grade school drawing contest because the judges didn't think a child could have done the work. "Gary was self-taught … it was a gift, an amazing gift," he said. Warren said that Gary loved the outdoors, and fishing and hunting. "He was a purist," Warren said, "hunting with long bows, not compound bows. He was well-known in bow hunting circles." Gary was an outdoor/hunting guide, and tracked mountain lions with his hound dogs. His last pair of dogs was Ruby and Billie — hounds that Warren's daughter, Melanie, as a child, loved to encourage to "sing" to the neighborhood of cabin dwellers at the Cambridge lake. "I loved those dogs," Melanie, now a dentist in McCook, remembered this morning. "Gary used to get upset with me for encouraging them to sing," she said, with a soft chuckle. Class of 1965 graduates get together often, at Sehnert's bakery in downtown McCook, keeping close track of each other. This week, they'll remember Gary Ginther, artist, classmate and friend.

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