"Who after Betsy Ross, Martha Washington, and Abigail Adams is the most important early female figure in the formation of our nation? Sacagawea. But unlike the former three, the latter seems to capture the imagination with romance and color and symbolize the push Westward that has characterized the determination of our founders. Soon after he acquired The Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon in April 1803, in America’s first covert operation, President Jefferson conceived of and funded the extraordinary Corps Of Discovery to explore the huge expanse of unknown terrain west of the Mississippi. The Louisiana Purchase would later become all or part of the states of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, South Dakota, North Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and Louisiana. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were chosen by Jefferson to put together a group of explorers, amass equipment, and plan through the winter of 1803 in St. Louis, and to strike out for the West in the Spring of 1804. At their next winter camp at Fort Mandan in current North Dakota they hired a French Canadian fur trapper named Touissant Charbonneau and his wife Sacagawea who had a newborn son. The explorers were more interested in the young Shoshone woman than the trapper because they knew the importance of an interpreter after language difficulties with the Sioux. Too, the mother and infant would reassure native tribes encountered along the way that they were definitely not a war party. In one of the most touching incidents in the epic journey, Sacagawea was reunited with her brother whom she had not seen for years and she negotiated the purchase of sorely-needed horses for the Corps. She and her baby made the incredibly arduous trip to the Pacific and then back in 1806. She is believed to have died in Ft. Manuel, South Dakota in 1812, although another report states that she died 72 years later at the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming.
Her son Jean Baptiste was nicknamed Pomp by William Clark who later helped educate the lad in St. Louis. He is the only child ever depicted on United States Currency. Jean Baptiste traveled to Europe, acted as a guide and trapper in Utah and Idaho, and guided the Mormon Batallion from New Mexico to California in 1846. He died on his way from California to Montana in 1866. (documentation received from the sculptor on July 16, 2010)"
"All across America in countless public, private, municipal and museum collections, Glenna Goodacre’s bronze sculptures are immediately recognizable for their lively expression and texture, and for their intriguing composition. After graduation from Colorado College and classes at the Art Student’s League in New York, she became a successful Texas painter, but since 1969 she has concentrated mainly on sculpture. She has simultaneously been an active wife, mother, and now grandmother.
Her most well-known work is the Vietnam Women’s Memorial installed in Washington, D.C. in 1993. Goodacre was selected in 1997 as sculptor for the monumental Irish Memorial in Philadelphia. Completed and installed at Penn’s Landing in 2003, the massive bronze is her most ambitious public sculpture – with 35 life-size figures. In 1998, her 8-foot standing portrait of Ronald Reagan was unveiled at the Reagan Library in California. Another cast is at the National Cowboy & Western Museum in Oklahoma City. After a nationwide competition for a Sacagawea dollar coin design in 1999, Goodacre’s rendering for the face was unveiled at the White House by First Lady Hillary Clinton. In 2004, her heroic bronze portrait of legendary West Point Coach Colonel Earl “Red” Blaik was dedicated at the National College Football Hall of Fame. Also in 2004 she designed the Children’s Medal of Honor awarded to First Lady Laura Bush in Dallas by the Greater Texas Community Partners.
An academician of the National Academy of Design and a fellow of the National Sculpture Society, Goodacre has won many awards at their exhibitions in New York. Goodacre has received honorary doctorates from Colorado College, her alma mater, and Texas Tech University in her hometown of Lubbock. In 2002, her work won the James Earl Fraser Sculpture Award at the Prix de West Exhibition. In 2003, she was awarded the prestigious Texas Medal of Arts and later that year was inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Fort Worth. In 2005 a street in Lubbock, Texas, was named Glenna Goodacre Boulevard and in Santa Fe at the State Capitol, Bill Richardson awarded her the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. In 2006 she was appointed by Governor Richardson to the State Quarter Design Committee to help design a U.S. quarter coin representing New Mexico. In 2008 Glenna was named Notable New Mexican by the Albuquerque Museum Foundation. The honor, shared with previous recipients Pete Domenici, Wilson Hurley, and Tony Hillerman, includes a documentary film by PBS affiliate KNME in Albuquerque. 2009 marks her 40th anniversary as a sculptor.
Glenna is a life-long visitor to New Mexico and a resident since 1983. She and her husband attorney C.L. Mike Schmidt have homes in Santa Fe and Pecos and in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
(Written By: Daniel Anthony) (
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