Donald De Lue

He studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and later served as an assistant to sculptors Richard Henry Recchia and Robert P. Baker.

In 1941, De Lue won a competition to create sculpture for the U.S. Post Office and Courthouse Building in Philadelphia, and from then on he stopped being an assistant for other artists and only worked on his own commissions and creations.

In 1960, he won two Henry Hering Awards, given by the National Sculpture Society for outstanding collaboration between a sculptor and an architect, for the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer, France, and for the Stations of the Cross at the Loyola Jesuit Seminary in Shrub Oak, New York.

[2] In his later years, De Lue and his wife Naomi (who served as a model for many of his statues) lived in the Leonardo section of Middletown Township, New Jersey, a small shore town with a bayside beach and long-distance view of lower Manhattan.

The bigger-than-life statue of James Bowie, William B. Travis, and Davy Crockett was considered "too violent" by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas for placement in a sacred chapel.