Did you know...
After 80 years, the National Park Service finally recognized the masterful work of Luigi Del Bianco, chief carver of Mount Rushmore. The construction on Mount Rushmore began in 1927 and ended in 1941. Del Bianco came to work on the project in 1933 as a senior driller and became chief carver two years later. He studied stone carving in Vienna and Venice before he came to the United States.
Del Bianco was born in 1892 on a ship off the coast of France while his parents were coming back from the United States. He was raised in Meduno in the Friuli Venezia Guilio region and he began studying stone carving when he was eleven years old. He came to America at seventeen. He worked on refining the president's facial features fixing a crack in Jefferson's lip and sculpting Lincoln's eyes. But the work halted because of World War II. The plans originally included the torso of the presidents, but the funds ran out and they never revisited. Del Bianco returned to Port Chester, New York where he carved tombstones. Del Bianco died in 1969 of silicosis, a lung disease caused by silica dust.
If being the chief carver of Mount Rushmore is not the American dream for an immigrant, what is??