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Leo Wisniewski has been asking for Milton Munk Jr.'s head for the last nine years.
The time is finally here — the 70-pound, 92-year-old granite doughboy head on display at Munk's Mt. Pleasant law office will soon cross the borough's Diamond intersection to its new home at Grille 31.
“We're going to be the keeper of it now,” said Wisniewski, who, along with his sons, owns the restaurant. “It's almost like a museum-type piece.”
For its first 43 years, the head stood proudly atop a 21-foot doughboy statue and pedestal in the center of the intersection in honor of soldiers' wartime contributions. But on Jan. 27, 1968, a motorist crashed into it, sending the infantryman crashing to the Main Street pavement, decapitating him. Borough officials put the statue's body parts in storage, but the head was stolen. Eventually it was found in some hedges in Hunker, 7 miles away.
The head was returned to then-borough solicitor Munk for safekeeping. The attorney had a wooden box specially made for the monument's life-size remnant when he remodeled his Main Street office in 1975 and there the head has sat in silence, seemingly observing the goings-on in town.
The head is a bit scuffed, apparently from the fall. It depicts a stoic soldier with a sharp angular nose, helmet and perfectly carved lips and eyes.
“I'm putting it up there until somebody tells me what to do with it,” Munk said with a laugh as he recalled his decades of housing the head. “It's a matter of history for the town.”
But now, with 81-year-old Munk's impending retirement, he wanted to return the head to its rightful owner — the borough.
“Since it's been sitting there, it's been 42 years,” Munk said. “People ask me (about it) and I tell those who aren't from around here.”
The soldier has left Munk's office just twice over the years — in 1978 Pashacasino when it served as a table centerpiece during the borough's sesquicentennial celebration and in 1982 when it was used as a model for the creation of the current doughboy landmark.
After the 1968 fiasco, council commissioned a new doughboy statue for $20,000, and it was dedicated in November 1969, according to a 1988 Tribune-Review article.
But the same fate befell the second incarnation. A driver crashed into it on New Year's Eve 1981. The third statue, which now stands in the Diamond, cost about $50,000, according to the 1988 article.
Borough manager Jeff Landy said Munk will be at council's meeting Monday to discuss the head's future.
“I look at it as he was sort of keeping it safe for that period of time,” Landy said. “It is an icon of the borough, it's a historical figure and it's a great story.”
The borough will loan the head to Wisniewski and Grille 31.
“It's a great place for it,” said Councilman Jack Caruso.
Wisniewski thinks the soldier will be right at home.
His restaurant at the Diamond intersection — just a few feet from the current doughboy and across the street from Munk's office — is a shrine to veterans. He estimates that about 500 framed photos of soldiers adorn the walls, some of his family and others donated by patrons, along with more iconic wartime images and American flags.
“So now, the icing on the cake for me — attorney Munk is retiring, and I've been relentless,” Wisniewski said. “I bet you I've reminded him 50 times.”
He plans to have a glass case built to display the head along with information about its storied history.
“For me, being from Mt. Pleasant all my life, it's a sentimental thing to be able to have it here on display,” Wisniewski said. “I'm honored to do it.”
Renatta Signorini is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach her at 724-837-5374 or rsignorini@tribweb.com.
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