Principal Park isn’t just home to a beautiful baseball field and a beautiful view of downtown Des Moines, it is also home to multiple beautiful pieces of art, as numerous statues and sculptures surround the walls.
In this multi-part series, we will dive into the story behind each of the five pieces surrounding Principal Park.
In the first installment, moving from beyond the right field wall around the stadium, we will begin with “Ears of Joy.”
“Ears of Joy”
Located just up the steps from the fountains outside Principal Park, “Ears of Joy” depicts a boy running with his dog, the pooch’s ears flapping in the wind.
That boy is Christopher Gartner, the late son of former Iowa Cubs majority owner Michael Gartner, who owned the team from 2000-2021, and that dog is Finnegan.
Christopher died at age 17 in 1994 from an initial attack of childhood diabetes, and told his father, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, that Finnegan was his favorite of the family’s two dogs when Christopher was growing up.
“... We have always had big dogs at our home, and when Christopher was little we had a Bouvier named Mandy and an otterhound named Finnegan,” Michael Gartner wrote in an email to the Cubs. “Mandy had clipped ears, and Finnegan had big floppy ears.
“Once, in the early 1980s when Christopher was probably five or six years old, he and I drove to Chicago to see some museums and just have a good time. He was always chatty, and we talked about a million things along the way. At one point, I asked him which dog he liked best, Mandy or Christopher, and he replied right away. “Finnegan,” he said, “because his ears are so big you can wipe your tears on them.” That’s the kind of thing a father never forgets…”
Coupled with the statue, an excerpt from Michael Gartner’s USA Today column about his son’s passing is inscribed on a plaque, you may need some tissues.
The piece was done by award-winning sculptor Jane DeDecker, born in Marengo, Iowa, in 1961, an Iowa-born who has created over 175 sculptures in over 30 states.
“I had admired Jane DeDecker’s works, so after Christopher died I wrote her and asked if she could do a sculpture of a boy and a big-eared dog, " Michael Gartner said. “I told her the story, and she agreed. Part of the arrangement was that she could make 20 or 25 of them, and over the years I bought three.
“The first was given to the city of Ames and placed in Christopher Gartner Park there, a small neighborhood park. The second is at Orchard Place in Des Moines, next to a beautiful two-story greenhouse that is used as a place where the kids there can gather and have fun as well as learn about plants and the like. The greenhouse (called Club Chris) was designed by Des Moines architect Cal Lewis, who had been Christopher’s soccer coach when Christopher was a little boy. We bought a third one later on and gave it to the city to be placed at the ballpark. At the time, the city appraised its value at $37,500. There are several others around the country, I wonder if they know the story of it.”