“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 Barker Welfare Foundation, which she established in 1934, made the John Barker mansion available to the University in 1948. It was a 38-room Victorian mansion built in 1857 in Michigan City, Indiana. Classes were held there as part of Purdue’s statewide “extension centers” until the Purdue University North Central campus in Westville opened in 1967. This story originally appeared in the July/August 2015 issue of Purdue Alumnus magazine.
