Mount Rushmore's long hidden love story

Author Richard Cerasani of Wilton, author of "Letters from Mount Rushmore," poses with his book at a recent book fair.

When Richard Cerasani looks at the majestic stone heads carved on Mount Rushmore, he sees his parents.

His father, Arthur, was one of the sculptors who helped create the national memorial, while his mother, Mary, encouraged him from afar.

It’s a story Cerasani knew little about until one day in 2004, when he found a trunk full of his parents’ old love letters in his mother’s attic in Wilton.

“It was this dusty old trunk, and when I opened it, oh my gosh, except for the silverfish, this thing was filled with letters and [plaster] heads of the presidents and Americana stuff,” the Wilton resident recounted.

The letters were written by his parents during the six months Arthur Cerasani worked on Mount Rushmore.

His parents had both died by the time Cerasani discovered the letters, so it took him seven years to piece the story together on his own. The result was “Love Letters from Mount Rushmore,” published in May 2014 by the South Dakota State Historical Society Press.

The story began when Arthur Cerasani and Mary Grow met. She was a teacher living in Avon, and he a sculptor from Rochester.

“Dad was a first-generation [Italian] immigrant. His mother and dad didn’t even speak English,” Cerasani recounted. “Mother was, you would have to say, blue-blooded, in the sense that her father was a geologist and an oil property owner.”

The couple married in 1936, against the wishes of Mary Grow’s parents. Work was scarce, and the young couple struggled to provide for their family.

“When they ran out of money, they had to move back in with their parents and visit each other on the weekends,” Cerasani said. “Dad, as an artist, was shoveling snow, working as a night clerk, doing anything to survive, to keep the family going, and mother, even with two little kids, would be selling all-occasion greeting cards. She’d go door to door.”

Then one day, Arthur Cerasani received an unexpected visit from Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor famous for carving the 60-foot-tall heads on Mount Rushmore. After seeing his work, Borglum recognized his talent and offered him a job with the ongoing project in South Dakota.

In March 1940, an elated Arthur Cerasani left his family behind and traveled 1,500 miles by train from Rochester to Mount Rushmore. Things there were not as he imagined they’d be.

“He gets out there, and the first thing, Gutzon Borglum tells him the wrong date. He’s left alone waiting on a train platform at 6:15 in the morning, and no one comes to get him until 4 o’clock in the afternoon. His trunk has been lost on the train, and then he gets to the site of Mount Rushmore and he says, [in a letter to his wife,] ‘Oh my gosh, honey, we will never get you to come out here. This place is filthy, this is horrible, this is like a mining camp. This is not a place for women and children,’ ” Richard Cerasani recounted.

For weeks, Arthur Cerasani slept in the office of a government agent because there was no place else for him to stay.

His vision of working closely with Borglum faded as the days passed. He never even had contact with the great sculptor until the beginning of April.

Much of his time was spent doing grueling, menial work. In his letters home, he frequently threatened to leave, but always decided to stick it out in order to support his family.

In June 1940, Mary Cerasani made a surprise visit to Mount Rushmore and stayed for a month. Cerasani was able to piece together what happened during that time from entries in his mother’s diary.

The office Arthur Cerasani had been using as a bedroom was no longer available, so he and his wife slept in an insect-infested tent that became unbearably hot in the daytime. They had to hike to an outhouse and bathed using buckets of water.

While she was in South Dakota, Mary Cerasani continually searched for ways to reunite their family permanently.

“She actually tried to find out ways she could make money, and she ended up making more money, in a way, than my dad, because she found out she could take tourists up the mountain and get 25 cents a person,” Cerasani recounted.

Arthur Cerasani spent six months working at Mount Rushmore, returning home when the project ran out of money.

“Love Letters from Mount Rushmore” is illustrated with family photos and breathtaking shots of the carving of the national memorial.

“It’s not just about my parents; it’s about an era that we came out of, which is the Great Depression. It’s about self reliance. … It’s about Americana,” Richard Cerasani said.

A retired actor known to the world as Richard Caine, Cerasani moved to Wilton in 2004 to escape the hectic pace of life in New York City. Prior to that, he spent years commuting between New York City and Hollywood, making television dramas and commercials.

He’s probably best known as the villain Bill Watson on the daytime soap opera “General Hospital,” but Cerasani has worked with stars including Tim Conway, Burt Reynolds, Gene Hackman and Liza Minnelli. He has appeared in episodes of “Law and Order,” “Quincy” and “Columbo.”

Caught up in his acting career, he said he never took enough time to learn about his parents’ lives while they were alive. After studying their letters and diaries, he said he realized they were heroes.

“If anyone asks, ‘What’s your subtext?’ It’s about heroes. We all need heroes, and growing up, it’s about picking the right ones. And my gosh, if they’re within your family, how great it is,” he said.