Horse tamer statue comes home to Roslyn High

Rose Weldon
Andrew Antenberg, president of the Office of Class Councils and a senior at Roslyn High School, makes final remarks at the rededication of the Horse Tamer statue. (Photo by Rose Weldon)

After seven years of absence, the restored Horse Tamer has been returned to its pedestal at Roslyn High School.

A rededication ceremony was held last Thursday by the Friends of the Horse Tamer, which raised $100,000 to restore the statue to its place, where the school community, alumni and local dignitaries gathered to officially welcome it home.

As a light drizzle fell, Barry Edelson, director of community relations for the district, told the spectators the origins of the statue, one of two identical statues found at the Mackay estate, copied from the Marley horses in Paris.

“In 1959, the local artist George Gách found the Horse Tamer lying in pieces, about to be buried forever beneath the gardens of the Mackay estate,” Edelson said.

Not willing to let a work of art be buried, Edelson said, Gách approached the Board of Education and asked if it would accept the sculpture, and once the funds were raised to place it in front of the school, returned in later years to make additional repairs.

Over time, weather conditions and “youthful high spirits,” as Edelson remarked, caused the statue to deteriorate and resulted in its removal in 2012 for safety reasons. At that time, alumna Barbara Silverman Berke heard the news from her father, Alvin Silverman, and set out to raise the funds necessary to restore the statue.

Berke recruited fellow alumna Laura Rosenberg in the cause, and the two collected the $100,000 needed in seven years, with donations flooding in from alumni across the country and as far away as Australia.

“It is just remarkable to see,” Rosenberg said. “We have our 50-year reunion this weekend, so we couldn’t have timed it better. It’s unbelievable.”

Roslyn High School’s band and chorus, directed by Frank Mauriello and Cynthia Feinman, respectively, then performed “God Bless America” and “Always.” Both songs were written by composer Irving Berlin, who, as school board President Meryl Waxman Ben-Levy pointed out, had married Ellin Mackey, who grew up on the estate.

School officials and local dignitaries, including Roslyn Superintendent Allison Brown, school board president Meryl Waxman Ben-Levy, Town of North Hempstead Supervisor Judi Bosworth, Town Clerk Wayne Wink and Town Councilman Peter Zuckerman, gather at the rededication of the Horse Tamer statue at Roslyn High School. (Photo by Aram Ebrahimian)

Andrew Antenberg, Roslyn High senior and president of the Office of Class Councils,  congratulated Silverstein Berke and read remarks from former President Danny Pollack, who graduated the year the statue was removed.

“‘It has meant so much to see how the Roslyn, school and alumni communities came together to make this a reality,'” Antenberg quoted him as saying.

Town of North Hempstead Councilman Peter Zuckerman graduated from Roslyn in 1986, and returned to see the statue placed on its pedestal once more.

“It’s a wonderful honor and a privilege for Roslyn High and all the residents of Roslyn to have it back, and I appreciate all the hard work of everyone who participated in restoring this beautiful monument,” Zuckerman said.

Silverman Berke said that in letters accompanying donations, alumni mentioned that making donations was “a way of giving back to a school that gave them so much early in their lives.”

“The Horse Tamer statue here at the high school is emblematic of the greatness that Roslyn High School was and is for many of us, and it represents an irreplaceable sentimental symbol of our formative years,” Silverman Berke said.

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