Original Tim Kelly surf statue in Hermosa Beach gets a new head.
Rick Koenig holds a new head for the original Tim Kelly statue. The head was created on a home-made 3-D printer by Reuben Vollmer. Photos In 2005, Rick Koenig was visiting Hermosa Beach Public Works foreman Mike Flaherty at the city yard when he saw an arm sticking up from a dumpster. Koenig was a planning commissioner at the time. “Whose arm is that?” Koenig asked. “Tim Kelly’s. The foundry just returned him to us,” Flaherty answered. “I want him,” Koenig said. “Take him,” Flaherty said. Koenig dug through the dumpster and found all nine dismembered parts of the Tim Kelly statue that for nearly three decades stood at the foot of the Hermosa Beach pier. Koenig took the body parts to the old cafeteria in the former Pier Avenue Junior High. The Hermosa Beach Historical Museum was using the room for storage. In 2010, when the city reclaimed the old cafeteria for an emergency operations center, Koenig took the body parts home, all but the head. “Someone bagged the head. To this day, we don’t know where it is,” Koenig recalled Saturday, while working in his side yard on the statue’s restoration. Koenig might be mistaken for a hoarder, were it not for the fact that he is President…
Read this story on easyreadernews.com