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Thomas Edison Trounces Jesse Owens in Race to Become a Washington Statue

By Vince Grzegorek on Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 4:32 pm

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Yes, I'm looking at you, Jesse Owens.

There was good news last week for the folks at the Thomas Edison birthplace in Milan, Ohio, run by Robert Wheeler, who’s also the synth/theremin player for Cleveland bands Pere Ubu and Home and Garden. After a lengthy public voting period, Edison was chosen over nine other candidates to be honored with a block of rock in the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington, D.C. Each state gets two statues; Edison will join President James A. Garfield and replace 19th-century Ohio Senator and Governor William Allen, who had a robust appetite for slavery. The Edison Birthplace Association, which has been working to make this happen for more than three years, out-hustled supporters of other candidates like Jesse Owens, Ulysses S. Grant, and second-place finishers the Wright Brothers. — Anastasia Pantsios