Iowans can be cult-like in our celebration of anyone with connections to this state.

Birthplaces, museums and roadside attractions dot the Iowa landscape, and all-day events fill the calendar in remembrance of people who, let’s be honest, could barely be called a Hawkeye.

So, it stands to reason that two people who not only told Iowans' stories for decades (offering a lens through which the world could better understand our residents) but also created RAGBRAI (the world’s oldest, largest and longest recreational bicycle touring event) should have a spot in the canon of famous Iowans.

Finally, those two people — Register columnists Donald Kaul and John Karras — are getting their due in the form of a statue in Des Moines' Water Works Park.

The culmination of a decade-long movement to honor Karras and Kaul, the piece will not only recognize them as founders but also celebrate RAGBRAI as a vanguard cycling event.

Constructed of bronze and aluminum, the statue will feature abstract renderings of the two newspapermen alongside long, undulating strips representing the rolling hills of Iowa and dozens of circular rings standing in for bicycle rims.

The statue, first announced about three years ago, whose working title is "RAGBRAI: River to River," remained under wraps as it wound its way through city ordinances and public art proposals.

But after Kaul’s death this summer, the team behind the project accelerated its work.

With artist Gail Folwell of Colorado selected and her design finalized, the project's committee is ready to announce the next stage: Fundraising.

The statue will cost about $200,000, said T.J. Juskiewicz, RAGBRAI director and one of the project’s ringleaders.

RAGBRAI, which kicked in funds to see the statue through its initial stages, promised to throw $30,000 and proceeds from this year's Pigtails and BACooN rides toward the piece.

While the timing of the remaining steps will be determined by how well fundraising goes, Juskiewicz hopes the piece will be installed by the 50th anniversary of the ride in 2022.

As news dribbled out about the project, cyclists, artists, architects, city workers and state employees moved from casually interested to excited stakeholders. Getting this far has been a group effort, Juskiewicz said.

"It's been the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of bringing worlds together," he said. "And I'm so glad that instead of just slapping together a statue that kind of looks like them, we held out for a truly nice piece of art in a place that is going to be really neat."

For John Karras, the idea of being immortalized in a statue that people take pictures with is, well, odd.

"The event itself, RAGBRAI, deserves something, but Kaul and I just kind of fell into it," he said. "We had no plans to turn it into the legendary event it is.

"We just wanted to go on a bike ride and have the Register pay for our expenses."

The spokes of RAGBRAI

Carl Voss, a former Register photographer and cycling community mainstay, long has thought it a travesty that no memorial to the roving cultural institution of RAGBRAI exists in the state it has come to define.

"If you introduce yourself and say, 'I live In Iowa,'" he said, "the response is, 'Oh yeah, I had a friend who rode on that bike ride.' It’s become an identifying, positive aspect of Iowa that many people know."

But becoming synonymous with Iowa is just one spoke in the wheel of how RAGBRAI has impacted the state.

As riders pedal over gravel roads in sweltering heat, they spend money in small, rural communities. There’s no telling how many churches have roofs or high school teams have uniforms because of funds raised by hungry cyclists.

And past the borders of Iowa, RAGBRAI made a huge mark on cycling, said Tim Lane, another veteran RAGBRAI rider and early advocate of the project.

Back in 1973, when two ink-stained wretches tightened their chains, Lane said biking was hardly the heralded sport it has become.

In part to the success of RAGBRAI, other states created rides spanning large distances within their borders, and biking moved from a hippie pastime to a legitimate mode of transportation and exercise.

"John and Don had a larger impact on cycling than Lance Armstrong," Lane said.

All this significance was kicking around Voss' head when he met Juskiewicz for coffee in November 2015. By the time the pair finished their joe, the basic concept to honor the two newspapermen who started this biking behemoth was crystallized into a public sculpture.

Within six months, the pair had gathered a committee of influencers to find the perfect place for the piece. After the memorial's proposed location at the base of the Jackson Street bridge fell through, the committee settled on Water Works Park for its greenery and proximity to a bike trail.

"When you look at Water Works, it looks more like the Iowa landscape; Everywhere else looked like Des Moines," Lane said. "If you are going to represent RAGBRAI, a ride across Iowa, this was the place to put it."

By the time the ride was ambling across Iowa in 2017, the committee had solicited designs from artists.

The final sculpture would have to stand up to the frenetic weather of Iowa, require little maintenance and be able to survive a flood or two.

More than 100 artists submitted designs that the committee culled down to two finalists. Folwell won out for her history of interactive outdoor statues celebrating sports.

In her design, the faces of the two central figures won't be sculpted to look exactly like Karras and Kaul. Instead, they will be abstract, to allow viewers to take in not just their accomplishment, but the meaning of RAGBRAI writ large, she said.

One of the men will be leaning back, looking at the rings standing in for bicycles in a sense of wonderment for "the overwhelming response they got from a simple idea," she said.

The other is taking a more "cocky stance, like, 'Yeah, this is what we did.'"

"They made something that was really a big deal, and it celebrates the state and cycling and health, which are all the things I want to celebrate through my art," Folwell said.

"Art, performance, music and sports bring people together unlike anything else," she added. "They level the playing field and make us realize we are one humanity; Not us vs. them, but one big party.”

Founders: Being private in public

Karras and Kaul had no idea what their trip across Iowa would become when they first set out from the Missouri River.

Inviting readers along was the editor's idea, and Karras thought the notion was "stupid" to boot. When he saw the turnout, he was even more nervous about the whole endeavor.

"I was just thinking, 'Where do we house these people?'" Karras said.

As much as Karras shies away from highlighting his work on RAGBRAI, his door is decorated with a "RAGBRAI Road" sign, and despite not having cycled in years, a bike still graces a corner in his small room.

Over the decades, the founders have been presented as holding a somewhat cantankerous view of RAGBRAI. Nothing could be further from the truth, said Rachel Kaul, Donald Kaul’s daughter, but the relationship was complicated.

As public a figure as Kaul was, he was a very private person, she said.

"He really enjoyed RAGBRAI, but the kind of celebrity status he had there was also somewhat uncomfortable for him," she said. "To be clear, that doesn't mean he didn't appreciate or value or love the ride, because he did."

Most of all, her father would have enjoyed the fact that anything in remembrance of him or his work would be in Iowa, a place he loved despite being known as a big-city Detroit native, she said.

Even as he would be looking at the sculpture thinking the "joke's on me," he would be very grateful.

"He would have probably have preferred a Pulitzer," Rachel said with a laugh, "but a statute is a very good thing, too."

COURTNEY CROWDER, the Register's Iowa Columnist, traverses the state's 99 counties telling Iowans' stories. You can contact her at (515) 284-8360 or ccrowder@dmreg.com. Follow her on Twitter @courtneycare.

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