Gary Lee Price

On Monday, July 4, 2016, Gov. Gary Herbert was on hand for the unveiling of the Statue of Responsibility and for the dedication the new names on the war memorial in downtown Provo, UT.  The statue is 6′ high and features two arms, with each hand clasping the opposite wrist, as if one is pulling the other skyward.  Gary Lee Price is the sculptor behind the Statue of Responsibility.

Price and the Responsibility Foundation are working on finding a home for a 305′ cast aluminum version of the statue.  The original idea of a ‘Statue of Responsibility’ was by Viktor Frankl, a holocaust survivor who wrote “Man’s Search for Meaning.”  In it he states, “Freedom, however, is not the last word.  Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth.  Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness.  In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.   That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.”

In the 1990’s, Dr. Frankl, Dr. James Newman, Dr. Stephen R. Covey and a few others discussed plans to make the Statue of Responsibility a reality.  In 1997, Gary Lee Price developed a prototype of a statue depicting two hands clasped together.  The finished monument will stand at the same height as the Statue of Liberty with an observation deck on top of the monument.