78Skipper and the Turtle

On a bronze tree stump near the square, a group of children sit tangled together the way children actually sit — one holding a lamb, the others leaning in. The sculptor was Eugenie Kamrath Mygdal, the dedication was June 23, 2001, and the plaque is wonderfully specific about who everyone is. The children stand for fun, happiness, curiosity and innocence, and for the major ethnic and cultural groups of Waco. The lamb, held by the boy, is the farming and ranching that built this city. The dog — the plaque gives his name, Skipper — is faithfulness and watchfulness. The turtle is eternity.

A few steps away, a slab of pink granite carries the sculpture's whole argument in one line, and the line is twenty-four centuries old. “We were born not to share in hate but in love.” Sophocles wrote it for Antigone; Bernard and Audre Rapoport gave it to the Waco community. A Greek playwright, quoted in granite, next to a dog named Skipper — this is exactly the kind of company public art should keep.