(From left) DeMario Pitchford and artist Paul DiPasquale at the Arthur Ashe Jr. monument. At age 10, Pitchford was a model for one of the children depicted on the statue. (Photo by Jay Paul)
It was a beautiful day,” recalls DeMario Pitchford. “For a young Black kid as myself, I didn’t really know at the time what I was witnessing. There was some racial stuff, but I didn’t really pay any attention to that. Something else more important was going on.”
Pitchford is describing the July 10, 1996, dedication of the Arthur Ashe Jr. statue on Monument Avenue. Created by artist Paul DiPasquale, it was unveiled on what would’ve been Ashe’s 53rd birthday.
Ashe died at age 49 in New York on Feb. 6, 1993, from complications due to AIDS. The infection originated from a blood transfusion during heart bypass surgery. The Wimbledon champion was born and raised in Richmond but left the racially segregated city in pursuit of a groundbreaking tennis career that opened paths to writing and civil rights advocacy.
Pitchford is one of four youngsters depicted on the statue gazing up at Ashe. The others are DiPasquale’s daughters, Kate and Mary, and Camera, the adopted daughter of Ashe and his wife, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe.
“I was there through the whole process,” Pitchford recalls. “When [DiPasquale] was making it from the clay to the molding to the bronze to the unveiling.”
Photo by Alexa Welch Edlund courtesy Richmond Times-Dispatch
Pitchford lived with his aunt a few blocks from the Fulton Hill residence of the DiPasquales and the sculptor’s studio. “He had a big barn in his yard,” Pitchford says, chuckling, “and I was a curious kid.” Peering inside the barn, the 10-year-old Pitchford found works in progress and models for other sculptures. “I asked him what he did in there, and he told me, ‘Well, I’m an artist.’ ”
DiPasquale, a 1973 graduate of the University of Virginia, with a 1977 MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, by this time had created the colossal Native American head of “Connecticut,” which adorned The Diamond for many years, and “The Headman,” a depiction of an African American canal boat navigator on Brown’s Island.
DiPasquale invited Pitchford to come by whenever he wanted. “It’s one of the best decisions I ever made in my life,” Pitchford says. “He became a mentor to me. And not long after we started knowing each other, he got the Arthur Ashe project.”
On April 8, 1992, Ashe announced his AIDS diagnosis in a televised news conference, bringing his calm but forceful voice into dialogue about the disease, which was still misunderstood at the time.
Later that spring, he returned to Richmond to teach a youth tennis clinic on the Byrd Park courts where segregation had prevented him from playing in his younger days. DiPasquale ferried a vanload of Fulton kids to see him.
Ashe impressed DiPasquale, who wondered why more people hadn’t come to see the champion. When Ashe stood alone following the demonstration, DiPasquale thanked him.
The sculptor considered the man and his deeds, read some of his autobiographical writing and contemplated a commemorative work.
Pitchford and DiPasquale in 1996 (Photo courtesy Paul DiPasquale)
He didn’t yet know of Ashe’s overtures to the city to establish a Black athletes hall of fame in Jackson Ward based on Ashe’s three-volume history, “A Hard Road to Glory,” but when DiPasquale learned about it, he sent a letter of inquiry to Ashe through Richmond civic leader Clarence Townes Jr. On Jan. 22, 1993, DiPasquale’s phone rang. “Hello,” the familiar voice greeted him. “This is Arthur Ashe.”
A statue for the hall of fame could be appropriate, Ashe said. He specified that it was not to be an idealized portrait, but one that showed him wearing a warm-up suit with his shoestrings untied — DiPasquale later learned that the loose laces were due to bone spurs in Ashe’s feet.
Ashe emphasized his belief in education for furthering the lives of children. He also mentioned including a tennis racket.
DiPasquale began preliminary sketches, and Ashe prepared reference material to send to him. Within weeks, however, Ashe succumbed to pneumonia. His widow, Jeanne, sent along a packet of photos, and when DiPasquale saw them, he wept.
Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, the state’s first elected Black governor governor and a friend of Ashe’s, directed that his body lie in state at the Executive Mansion. Some 6,000 people attended Ashe’s memorial service in the athletic center named for him. He was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery next to his mother.
DiPasquale soon began to work on the statue.
Moutoussamy-Ashe and other Ashe family members approved the drawings and the full-scale 12-foot-high model of the statue. She directed DiPasquale toward the nonprofit mentoring organization Ashe founded, Virginia Heroes Inc., and the group agreed to raise $400,000 toward the completion and installation of the 24-foot-high monument.
When Virginia Heroes publicly presented the plaster model in December 1993, Gov. Wilder made an astounding declaration. He stated of the five Confederate statues then present on Monument Avenue, “These are heroes from an era which would deny the aspirations of an Arthur Ashe. He would stand with them, saying, ‘I speak, too, for Virginia.’ ”
Wilder’s pronouncement took everyone — even DiPasquale — by surprise.
The endeavor to honor Ashe on Monument Avenue touched off a three-year political, cultural and historical paroxysm. Ashe’s vision for a pantheon of Black athletes faded without his guidance. Yet the idea for an Ashe monument inspired longtime proponents, including then-Councilman Chuck Richardson, who sought civil rights representation to expand Monument Avenue’s historical framing.
DiPasquale in his studio, with sketches of DeMario Pitchford in the back (Photo courtesy Paul DiPasquale)
On July 17, 1995, more than 100 public speakers addressed a marathon City Council meeting. Pitchford offered a carefully worded statement that his Mosby Middle School English teacher edited.
“It was a tough school,” Pitchford says, “but I was a straight-A student. I definitely needed some positive stuff in my life. And Mr. D showed me that if you want something, and you’re dedicated to the goal, you can make it happen.”
In a Jan. 1, 1996, Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial, Moutoussamy-Ashe stated that her late husband wanted a statue for a sports hall of fame. She wrote, “I am afraid that a statue of Arthur Ashe on Monument Avenue honors Richmond, Virginia, more than it does its son, his legacy, and his life’s work.”
However, on July 10, 1996, several thousand spectators gathered on Monument Avenue to listen to songs from choirs and impassioned remarks. Protesters waving Confederate flags stood to one side. All watched the tarp drop to reveal Ashe — and the children.
Pitchford says people didn’t believe he knew DiPasquale. “They thought that I’d entered some kind of contest,” he says, laughing.
Pitchford now lives outside Richmond and operates a nonemergency medical transport service. He’s been married for 20 years and has two children who know that the boy who grew up to be their father is on Monument Avenue.
“It’s incredible for me to think, 25 years later, that there’s a Black man, an athlete and a scholar on Monument Avenue,” he says. “It’s a beautiful thing.”
