Fremont's provocative bronze statue of Lenin was salvaged from the people of Poprad, Czechoslovakia in 1993 who, having suffered for 40 years under communism, were probably glad to see the back of the bearded curmudgeon. It was unearthed by a resident of Issaquah, Washington named Lewis Carpenter who had found it unloved and abandoned in a junkyard while working in Czechoslovakia as an English teacher soon after the Velvet Revolution. Carpenter forked out $13,000 to purchase the fierce 16-ft tall recreation of the wily Bolshevik leader and then put up another $41,000 (by remortgaging his home) to ship it to the US. After Carpenter’s death in 1994, the statue turned up – where else? – in Fremont. It still belongs to the Carpenter family and is allegedly ‘for sale’ for $300,000.
