Tired Boy, the bronze sculpture centered in Windsor Circle near the entrance of Wood Hall, was part of a collection of gifts donated to the university by philanthropist and art collector Catherine Barker Hickox of Michigan City, Indiana.
Its sculptor, Leopold Bracony, was inspired by an incident he witnessed during World War I. He noticed two people, a small boy and a woman, who stopped to rest in the midst of the bombing. Touched by the confidence the tired child placed in the woman, Bracony created the sculpture as a symbol of faith.
Barker Hickox was the only child of millionaire industrialist John H. Barker and was heiress to the Pullman-Standard railroad company fortune. The Baker Welfare Foundation she established donated her family home, a 38-room Victorian mansion built in 1857, to the research foundation in 1948 for use as the Purdue North Central campus. Classes were held there until PNC relocated to its current campus in Westville in 1968.
This story appeared in the July/Aug 2015 issue of Purdue Alumnus magazine.
