Architectural Treasures of the Grand Canyon

Arizona's Shrine of NT. JOSEPH

It was early 1942 when Mary Wasson happened upon the newspaper article about Felix Lucero. He had appeared, it said, in Tucson the year before, ensconced himself in a tent under the Broadway Boulevard bridge alongside the Santa Cruz River, and proceeded to sculpture the Last Supper out of riverbed sand.

She examined the accompanying photograph of his creation. "I think," she said to her husband, "that we've found our man."

Only they hadn't. Months passed before they finally located him, anonymously washing dishes in a Tucson cafe.

Shrine of ST. JOSEPH

Then there was the matter of convincing him to undertake what the Wassons had in mind. Lucero, a wiry descendant of Mayo Indians and a native of a Spanish-speaking town in southern Colorado, was terse and stubborn in English. “It's cold in Yarnell,” he muttered at one point.

“Then we'll come for you when it's warm.” An offer of room and board, plus more money then he was making as a dishwasher, finally persuaded him. So in June, Mary and William Wasson returned to Tucson and took Felix Lucero into the mountains of central Arizona. For years they'd had a vision, and they believed that the little sculptor was now going to fulfill it.

The community of Yarnell squats amidst colossal boulders heaped at the edge of an escarpment that rises above one of the broadest vistas in the American Southwest. Here the world suddenly plummets, dropping nearly 2,000 feet from high, grassy rangeland to flat Sonoran Desert. At the bottom, the vast plain appears in motion, a tan sea lapping against the granite, as layers of heat from the desert floor collide with the cliff and roll back on themselves.

Up top it is cooler; red-tailed hawks take free glides on thermals, and frequent gusts kick brush along U.S. Route 89, Yarnell's main street. A gold mine, now depleted, created the town; today, barely a thousand people live here in houses squeezed into the complicated terrain, and the sound of rising wind is more prominent than that of civilization.

But half a mile away from the center of town, beginning in a glade of cottonwoods and black walnut trees, even the wind stills. The leaves settle, and the earth catches its breath. Calls of mockingbirds, cardinals, and quail blend to a choir's hum. Owing to some gentle mystery, here nature collaborates with humans who come to immerse themselves in a juniper sweetness, to transmute worldly tensions into prayer.

This is Arizona's Shrine of St. Joseph. His tall image, as Felix Lucero eventually conceived him, stands at the base of a winding, ascending stone stairway, greeting visitors who come for undistracted contemplation of the redemption symbolized by the life of Christ. The son whom Joseph hoists in his arms is still a boy, the cross he holds a visual echo of his earthly father's hammer and framing square. Along the path set into the oak and acacia-covered hillside that rises above them, gleaming white representations of the adult Jesus portray the journey from the Garden of Gethsemane to Calvary.

The shrine was conceived during the Great Depression as a symbol of reassurance, personified by Joseph, head of the Holy Family. But in response to a world war, it expanded far beyond its original concept, growing straight up the mountain. And recently it has spread below, across the tiny stream its founders dubbed the Brook of Cedron, on a mission to extend its blessing from Arizona to the Third World.

William and Mary Wasson, who donated the land, belonged to the Catholic Action League, a group organized in the 1930s to aid the poor. William Wasson had worked in banking and real estate and had once been approached to run for mayor of Phoenix. Instead, he and Mary, a pianist and published composer, dedicated themselves to charity, housing many homeless unfortunates under their own roof. In 1937, they and other league members decided to build a retreat away from the urban trauma of the Depression. Because Joseph was a workingman, he was chosen as a symbol with whom all classes could identify.

That summer they camped out in Yarnell and held a box social, raising $32 toward a statue. That was hardly enough for alabaster; so they engaged a retired plasterer from Phoenix to try an economical shortcut. He poured a large block of concrete, which he chipped until an image emerged. It was, recalled Mary Wasson, “not perfect, perhaps, but very strong and appealing.” Phoenix artist John Coghlan softened whatever imperfections there may have been by painting it, and it was set in place alongside a thicket of mountain mahogany.

By 1938, when they held their first pilgrimage, their concerns had grown beyond economic woes, and the people who came to meditate and sleep outdoors prayed for peace in Europe and Asia. Eventually, the league decided that the shrine must also memorialize the sacrifice of the soldiers who were giving their lives to purify the world.

William and Mary Wasson pondered over what would be appropriate. With their teen-age sons, Bill and Barney, they tramped up the hillside behind the statue of St. Joseph. Wasson, who had studied commercial art, began to sketch an idea. The boys, long accustomed to sharing their bedroom with a stream of needy strangers, watched and accurately foresaw the formidable quantity of rocks and underbrush their summers would henceforth be dedicated to removing.

The memorial to the ultimate sacrifice the soldiers were making would replicate the Stations of the Cross. The Last Supper, the Vigil in Gethsemane, the Crucifixion, the fallen Jesus in the arms of the Sorrow-ing Mother, and Christ laid in the tomb would be portrayed by life-sized statues. Wooden crosses would line the path, bearing plaques and Gospel verses to depict scenes along Jesus' journey to glory. Mary Wasson pored over the Scriptures, choosing wording from the King James version and avoiding references that might cast blame on Jews. The message of the shrine, she insisted, must transcend sectarianism.

And the sculptures had to be exquisite. But how could they afford a professional artist when donations arrived at the rate of a sack of cement at a time? The cost of marble was prohibitive; the blue granite of Yarnell was far too hard to carve, and no one had heard of any lesser material that was sufficiently durable. They had to find someone versatile, ingenious, and willing to create beauty out of whatever their transparent budget could sustain.

Enter Felix Lucero, who had labored for holy wages all his life. When he was just an infant, his mother had died. He was a sickly child, and his grandparents vowed in church that if he were healed he would become a priest. But Felix decided early that art, not the cloth, was his calling.

He made an instant spiritual compromise the day he found his World War I battalion surrounded by Germans. Within minutes, all but 10 were wiped out. Their officers were dead, and Felix was chosen to lead. His promise under fire to the Almighty was to devote the next 20 years to sculpturing images of the Savior if the soldiers somehow got out alive. They lay among bushes, waiting until dark to begin crawling back toward headquarters. At one point, Lucero slept, dreaming that the artillery glow had coalesced into a brilliant vision of Jesus. When he awoke, the shimmering light remained. In an illuminated rapture, he followed it, leading his men to safety.

He passed the next 19 years roaming Europe, re-creating his battlefield image of Christ from media ranging from marble to wax. The 20th year found him back in the United States, fulfilling his promise with the group sculpture, “The Last Supper,” in the Tucson riverbed. But God, he learned, wasn't through with him yet.

He had never tried reinforced concrete before, the material league members had concluded they could afford. His first efforts cracked or simply crumbled. “Not going to work,” the moody artist grumbled.

Mary Wasson consulted a concrete expert. “It's impossible,” he agreed. “Concrete dries too fast. You'll never get the parts to stick to each other.” “Let's assume,” she countered, “that it's impossible, but you were going to do it anyway. Suppose you were building a bridge and the cement ran out. How could you fix it so you could add on more bridge later?”