LDS Podcast "Latter-Day Lights" - Inspirational LDS Stories

Sculpting a Legacy to Christ w/ The Monument of The Americas: Steve Neal's Story - Latter-Day Lights

• Scott Brandley and Alisha Coakley

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What if God called you to build something far bigger than yourself?

In this inspiring and educational episode of Latter-Day Lights, former plastic surgeon-turned-sculptor and painter Steve Neal shares how a lifetime of small artistic promptings—and a powerful temple experience—led him to an unexpected divine calling: building The Monument of The Americas, a large-scale Book of Mormon and American covenant sculpture park in Heber Valley. What began as what Steve describes as a “barely adequate” talent grew into decades of paintings, sculptures, and spiritual mentorship that shaped his mission in ways he never imagined.

Steve takes us through what the monument is all about—from his process of sculpting each individual piece, to the spiritual experiences that guided the project, to the meaningful ways we can support this legacy through our own contributions. Steve also opens up about his sudden cancer diagnosis, the miracle of remission, and how keeping his covenants has strengthened and sustained him through every challenge. His story is a powerful reminder that the Lord magnifies ordinary gifts, prepares us through every season, and calls us to do His work in His timing.

If you’ve ever questioned whether your contributions in the world matter, Steve’s journey will remind you that God can turn the softest of talents into a light that blesses generations.

*** Please SHARE Steve's story and help us spread hope and light to others. ***

To WATCH this episode on YouTube, visit: https://youtu.be/Lpi5Oq8M-is

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To LEARN MORE about the Monument of The Americas, visit: https://www.monumentoftheamericas.org/

To WATCH The Monument of The Americas recap video, visit: https://youtu.be/YKrKsJLmykU?si=pyL95TkqQ98XaQiI

To READ Scott’s new book “Faith to Stay” for free, visit: https://www.faithtostay.com/

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Also, if you have a faith-promoting or inspiring story, or know someone who does, please let us know by going to https://www.latterdaylights.com and reaching out to us.

Scott Brandley:

So if you're looking to be inspired and uplifted and spiritually recharged. Now, let's get back to the show. Hey everyone, I'm Scott Brandley.

Alisha Coakley:

And I'm Alisha Cookley. Every member of the chart has a story to share, one that can instill faith, invite growth, and inspire others.

Scott Brandley:

On today's episode, we're going to hear how one is learning. Welcome to Latter-day Legends.

Steve Neal:

Thanks for having us.

Alisha Coakley:

Thanks for reaching out to us. You actually reached out to us quite a while ago. And I remember when you told us about your story and you sent over the pictures and videos, I was so jealous that I'm not over there when you talk. I don't want to spoil too much. So before we get into all of the amazing things that you're going to share with us, and trust me, guys, like this is one of those episodes that you are going to want to watch and listen to. You're not just going to want to listen to it. So listen first if you have to, but go back through because uh Steve is going to be sharing a lot of pictures and stuff and videos with us for your viewing pleasure. So before we get started, Steve, will you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Steve Neal:

So I'm I now live in Heber City, Utah. Um I grew up in Utah, graduated from Bury High School, but I've been away for 45 years. We came back because that's where the Monument of Americas is going to be built in Heber Valley here. And uh I retired about uh a year and a half ago from my medical congratulations. Well, I'm still working hard, but I'm a full-time sculptor. I was a facial plastic surgeon, that's what got me into sculpture. Uh we have that's right. That's what I did. Um six daughters. Uh they're all, of course, raised. We raised them in Pendleton, Oregon. That's where I live.

Alisha Coakley:

Wow.

Steve Neal:

Um, 37 years in in one city, one practice setting. So I uh went to BYU, then University of Texas Medical School, San Antonio, Texas, trained in surgery, uh, odolaryncology, head and neck surgery, facial plastic surgery at University of California, San Diego. And uh that's where um that's where I started doing sculpture, actually. I'd always been a painter, but my mentor said, my professor said, if you want to uh uh you want to master facial plastic surgery, you got to take up sculpture. And I did. That's where all the errors are made. Uh we teach one another techniques, but nobody can teach you judgment. You have to learn that on your own. And that's what sculpture teaches you. It's um um I can tell it more about it later. But anyway, here I am in Heber, Utah. I haven't done any surgery now for a year and a half, but uh I I put in about I don't know, 60 to 75 hours a week of doing sculpture. I'm working real hard to get everything enlarged. They've all been created, but now we're enlarging them. So that's phenomenal.

Scott Brandley:

And well, yeah, high level, you're creating uh a sculpture park in Heber City called Monument of America's. And that's and that's I know that's part of your story, but just to give people a little bit of more background there, what you're working on.

Steve Neal:

Monument of America is first and foremost, is uh there are two gardens. Uh Christ in America basically is Book of Mormon, the Book of Mormon in sculpture. So uh after I'm dead and gone, it'll continue to be added to by other qualified sculptors. It'll become the largest, uh most unique place to learn about the Book of Mormon in the world.

Alisha Coakley:

So wow.

Steve Neal:

That's so cool.

Alisha Coakley:

That's gonna be amazing. I'm so excited. Well, thank you for sharing that. We're definitely excited to hear like how you've become this super accomplished gentleman, you know, like how you got into being a doctor and art and where this idea came from and all of that kind of stuff. So we would love to invite you to tell us where your story began.

Steve Neal:

Okay. Um I'm 72 years old now. You have to go back to at least 65, 68 years, when I was four years old, I guess. Why that? Because people ask me, when did you start doing art? I mean, when did it become a passion? I said, I it's always been that. Um I was intensely, I remember at four years of age, asking my mother to draw a cat in sacrament meeting, and I would draw a cat. I always have drawn. When I was a Boy Scout, I was doing colored pencil pictures out of the Boy Scout handbook that I really liked, or the encyclopedia. Um when I got to be a teenager, I then started doing psychedelic posters, you know, that San Francisco flavor, you know, for my friends. And I would um use acrylic paints and pen. And then I looked at it and I said, gee, these aren't gonna last very long. I want to do something that will last, a big painting. You're gonna laugh. My first oil painting is 10 feet long by five feet tall. I hang it in my garage. It has 50 life-size birds, and that's when I graduated to oil painting. I did that as a teenager when I was 15. So um then I went on a mission to Japan. When I came back, I wanted to do a serious oil painting for one of the converts in Japan of Joseph Smith in the Grove with the father and the son. And it was pretty rudimentary, but I was still doing oil painting, thinking, well, I'm gonna go into medicine for uh I kind of said, um, you don't want to be an artist and raise a family as an artist, you're gonna be a starving artist. So uh I was wired on both sides of my brain. I wanted to do medicine. And uh so I thought I was gonna leave all of this behind. And then I had a very uh profound spiritual experience. It was in February 1976. That was three months before I got married to my wife Susan. We were at BYU, and there was a 12-stake fireside, and President Boy K. Packer came. He was uh elder Packer at the time, and uh he gave um a very persuasive and a hallmark uh address for me. It was for artists, creative people. There are a lot of people out there listening to this, and they know exactly which one I'm talking about. But I thought he was talking to me, and I'll tell you why. He went and said, we have lots of artists in the church, very um uh accomplished artists in in sculpture and in painting and in uh art production and so forth. However, for having so many artists, we don't we hardly have any quality art, high art, it that talks about the message of the restoration. And um and then he said something, he says, I think the people in the church that will make this contribution are those who don't consider themselves very gifted. In fact, um this is he was talking to me at that time. I thought I was, you know, nothing, you know, I didn't have really a lot of uh uh God-given talent uh in art. I just thought, you know, I was what I did was okay. But he's talking to me because I don't think my gift is very significant. And he said, this really caught me, who thinks their talent is barely adequate. Those exact words, and it just is like an electric jolt to me. He he's talking to me. The church's uh art, a corpus of works that would really help strengthen the testimony of others in the church through this powerful medium. So what did I have to offer at the time? I was this mediocre painter, uh, oil painter, and um I made a covenant with God, and I did it that very day. I said, But Lord, if you will bless my talents and make them better. I promise that I will make all my efforts in trying to produce art that will talk about the message of the restoration, particularly the Book of Mormon, which was has always been my favorite book, um, and has been even more strengthened since that time. So I started to do that. Um, it took me a while. Uh I got into medical school, and this is a funny thing. My first serious Book of Mormon painting was while I was a medical student in Texas. Um, and it was uh the Enus, basically, Enus praying, and it was actually a self-portrait. And the way I did it, I tried to put some different things into it. And then I did another painting uh in my second year of medical school, and he did a third painting. That third painting is behind me, by the way. You can't see it very well, but that's Hagoth, the builder of ships. That was uh uh actually a patient of mine is Hagoth. I thought he looked like Hagoth. He's holding uh a this rod, a stick, and that was it was actually an IV pole. And I thought, hey, this is this is cool. And and so I did three paintings, three Book of Mormon paintings while I was in medical school. And that was um, we didn't have a job except go to school, you know, so that was good. Anyway, yeah, no, that's my my how I got started. Um okay. The um I went to University of California, San Diego for residency, and um it was during that time um that I was doing, I did another painting, and then I I had I always wanted to do Lehigh's Dream because there weren't a lot of paintings of Lehigh's Dream. I remember kind of sketchy ones. I know there's a lot now, but back in 1985 there weren't. And um people asked me, how do you get the inspiration for the paintings you do? I I it might be unique, I don't know. Um my paintings, the ideas in terms of the blocking and the view you have, they come in a flash in an instant. I think that's that's God's gift to me. And then I spend all my time hammering out the details where everything goes. Now, Lehi's dream, I wanted to view that from with under the tree, looking back to where people, faithful people came along the rod of iron, down into the depths of the dark mists, and came up and look across this chasm to the great and spacious building. And I wanted to be able, people looking at it closely, to be able to see the people who were mocking the humble followers of God. Now, for that to take place, the painting had to get really big. So to go from regular paintings, you know, 36 by 24 inches, whatever, this one became eight feet by four feet. And it took and it took it took me two years to do while I was in residency, and I had four kids at the time, and my wife and and uh, well, when did you do it, Doctor? I did it at nights when everybody was asleep, or I did it on weekends or vacations. That's why that took two years to do. Just as I finished it, uh my mother-in-law, she I credit her, she said, Steve, there's a there's a big church art contest from the church museum. It's an international contest. They've been advertising it. Why don't you put this in there? I thought, oh, sure, why not? So I sent them a picture, and then he said, uh, could after they, you know, I guess adjudicated to some degree, they said, Can you bring it to Salt Lakes? By this time, we had moved to Pendleton, Oregon, and uh it was my daughter's painting. I have six daughters, and I created a Book of Women painting for each one of my daughters. Heidi was first, the oldest one. She's the one that lives in Texas, by the way, Alisha. So uh she was five years old at the time when I started painting it, and by then she was more like eight or nine. And we drove it down to Salt Lake pulling it uh in a trailer and delivering.

Scott Brandley:

How do you how do you take a picture that big on the road?

Steve Neal:

You you it was the only thing in the trailer, so we laid it flat, you know.

Scott Brandley:

Oh, gotcha.

Steve Neal:

And we drove it down there because I couldn't put it in the car. And uh I was busy with my practice, and I said, uh uh, it'll never get a prize anyway. I never thought it would. But then they called me up and they said, You're getting a prize. Why don't you come down here on the night of? So okay, I'll do that. And anyway, it became it was a grand prize winner. I mean, it was the first prize, they wanted to buy it, and and I said, it's not for sale, it's my daughter's. But if you put it on in on display in the museum, I'll let you have it. So it was there for over 30 years. Over a million people have seen it. Uh, in fact, uh, if you look and come follow me for the last two times, the church used that painting for Lehigh's dream. Um, after 33 years or so, they got a new uh they got a new curator. And the curator says, hey, hey, we don't have any painting on bond on loan for 30 years. So tell the owner they have to donate it, or we have to buy it, or we're gonna send it back. Now, by then, my daughter has children of her own and she wanted them to see it. They were gonna put it away for 10 years, so uh they ended up shipping it back. And it ended up at my house again. I have it out there. It's gonna go into the visitor center for Monument of America. So, so see, I'm now I'm a serious painter. But why do you start doing sculpture? Now that's the not that's the next story. That happened. Um, I I know exactly when that happened. It was in uh May. Um, May 30 years ago. So that's 1996. Um I mentioned before, how did I why did I start doing sculpture? 40 years ago, my professor in facial plastic surgery said, if you want to master facial plastic surgery, you need to take up sculpture because that's where all the mistakes are made. Uh we teach one another the techniques, but um, where we really make the mistakes is when we did it too much or not enough, or we tried to uh get some unattainable goal and we stretch and we do something, we shouldn't have done that. And that's where the mistakes are done. And so um just a quick aside if any of you know about neuroscience, you know about um the uh left side of the brain, the right side of the brain. There's quite a difference between even female brains and male brains, but all of us have this uh dominant, what we call the dominant side of the brain. For Americans, it's usually the left side, and that's uh where doctors are selected for left brain skills. Uh those are the skills that are reading and writing and communication and mathematics and science and so forth. The right side of the brain is wordless, doesn't measure time. Uh that's where recognition of faces, directions, uh sculpture, where you're trying to imagine what shape you're trying to make it, including a face. If you're trying to do a facelift or a chin implant or something, you want it to look just so. Most importantly, it's a rhinoplasty, which uh that's where you change the shape of the nose, nose job. Um, because that surgery, you have more uh ability to alter the shape of the nose than any other plastic surgery operation. It's also the hardest plastic surgery operation to successfully have good results, time after time. In fact, I taught sculpting exercises for fellow facial plastic surgeons for over 15 years. My mentor, Leslie Bernstein, was who was instrumental getting me to take up sculpture, had me come to San Francisco for the art of rhinoplasty. It was the longest ongoing rhinoplasty course, it was 50-something years until he finally passed away. Uh so yeah, I was that's why I took it up. For 10 years, that's all I thought. It was kind of fun and make me a better surgeon. So in May of 1996, if you remember back then, those of you were temple goers, that's when music was added to the film Presentation of the Endowment. And uh my very first time I went to the Portland Temple, that was our temple district in Oregon, but uh the spirit was very, very powerful, very strong. Um and um I tell people that I don't see visions like the prophet Joseph saw visions, but that's as close as I've come. Um in my mind's eye, I could see a sculptured garden with a central figure of Christ, larger than all the rest of the figures. And at the same time, what came to my mind were uh there's a passage in my patriarchal blessing I never understood. Um, Matt or Scott, maybe when you went on a mission, you wanted to know everything that meant something in your patriarchal blessing. What does this mean? I want to be able to fulfill this. Uh and I was uh really trying to do that. But there are about two or three sentences there I didn't understand, and I didn't understand them until that day. Uh, and that this is the meaning of this cryptic kind of sentence in your patriarchal blessing. Uh and the sentence goes like this it says, You shall hold a light, or it may be seen from afar. Now you're talking latter-day lights, okay? You shall hold a light. I erroneously was thinking I was somehow this light. Okay. Um, it wasn't that. And then it says, You shall give this. Um, you shall give, no, first it says, after that sentence, it says, um this will be a blessing to those who prepare to hear the counsel of truth. This you will give in season and in the hour of need. Well, now is the season and the hour of need. What is that? It's Christ, basically. Christ is the light that you shall hold up. So this park and all it's like you didn't know. I was how old was I 30 years ago? 46. That's when I seriously started. That's kind of late for an artist. See, I thought he was gonna be a painter all my life, but he was this huge, huge kind of a thing to do. And I was 46 years old, and I didn't think I was good enough. Just like deja vu back in you know, 1976. Right. So um, the same thing. I promised the Lord, it was a covenant again. I will work on this every day that I can. Whether I see it actually happen or not, I don't know. That's not the covenant. The covenant is I would do the work. So to come this far as we have right now to see how much progress we've made is incredibly edifying for me to be able to see how this has come because for so many years I was I was um like a voice crying in the wilderness. Here's this guy ensconced in his studio in Oregon, and nobody knows what I'm doing, just the look. And I'm working on this big, huge progress project a piece at a time. Now, Michael Hall, who's a sculptor, a very fine sculptor, he's um a couple of years older than my oldest daughter, so we're kind of a generation apart. Um, I was introduced to him 20 years ago. He helped me to do this. Is the place uh at the place monument or heritage park, the Mormon Battalion sculpture, the Mormon Battalion Monument. They're huge sculptures. Uh at the time uh I was why did I do that? Um remember, President Packer, he he took, he was now President Packer, but he knew who did the the Lehigh's dream. Somebody one of my friends wrote him a letter saying, Hey, did you know what your effect of your of your address was? This painting would never have been painted. And so he liked that painting. He used it in one of his videos, but he also knew who I was up in Oregon. And uh when I started to create a small model of what this would look like and started to create some of the sculptures, I actually had an interview with him. It was right around the turn of the millennium, year 2000. And uh he and some of the other brethren were in this room, and they looked at what I'd done and some of my figures, and he said, Oh, this is too big. You can't do this just starting off. You need something smaller. That's how the Mormon Battalion Monument came to be. Uh, I had a friend of mine, Walla Walla, Washington Stake, and um he was uh active in the Mormon Battalion Association, and he knew they wanted to have a sculpture done. And they said, Hey, why don't you try and do a sculpture for a Mormon battalion? So I went down, met with the people, and the price was right. I didn't charge them anything. So uh they didn't have to pay the sculptor. So um I started working on that with small figure. Uh that's a funny story all of its own. I don't know how much I should give here and give some of those details away. But President Packer wanted to see what it looked like. So I brought my clay sculpture, which was a you know a clay sketch, down to his office in Salt Lake. And I was explaining this and that, and it was busy, had a lot of things, and and he goes, hold it, hold it, hold it. And I go, Oh, what do you want? Oh yeah, what would you like? He says, You're trying to say too many things with too much stuff. It's like shooting water into a tub. When you're done, there's no water in it. You've got to make it more simple. Uh, like the sculpture in Concord, uh, that Daniel Chester French, where he's got a rifle that's the single soldier. That's what he wanted. Well, I'm not that simple. I always wanted to do it more complex, you know, but it became two separate sculptures from that. And uh Elder Ballard was actually that he was the one that was the liaison between the um this was the place heritage park and the church. So I worked with him in composing this. We came up with these two big sculptures and so forth. And I became a bishop, I was called to be a bishop at this time. And uh gee, I didn't have enough time as it was. So Michael Hall was uh introduced to me 20 years ago. So he and I have been doing sculpture ever since, and he's another major sculptor. In fact, he just had uh uh if you saw a general conference this last time, they showed his sculpture on Temple Square. The church had him do that, Joseph Smith, the father and the son. That's quite an accomplishment. So um we are working together, have been for 20 years to build the Monument of America's. We added a third sculptor, Jeremy Hooley, who teaches art at the Lehigh High School, whatever he uh is mainly uh the founding of America, or and I'll I'll get into that in a little bit. So there are three of us now doing these sculptures all together. That makes about 73 sculptures that we have planned so far to go in the garden. So uh this uh that's this the spiritual nature behind this. How come I'm doing what I'm doing? I certainly didn't set out to do it. It wasn't some you know hare-brained scheme of mine. I really felt like it was a divine calling, so that's why I'm doing it. Um talk about uh how do you become a better sculptor? I did take some instruction. I was no fool. Uh all of this may have been God-given, but I did my best to have people who knew the business to teach me uh uh painting. Patrick DeVonis and uh Gary Smith, those are so some big names. Um I had Gary Sussman, he's with the Art Students Art of the New York Students Art League. He helped me with sculpture, plus some people over in Italy. I went to Italy to learn how to carve marble. Um, I thought I would do some marble pieces. Come to find out they take so long. I I don't have that many years left, so I'm doing mainly clay and bronze. But um this um I did one. Um, I wanted to do one of Jesus in marble. And um President Packer uh he wanted to see the the clay, and I I showed him the clay, what I was going to do. This is worth telling. Um he and now President Oaks, it was Elder Oaks at the time, met with me, and they were looking at my clay, and at the time I had it was uh a figure that I thought ultimately would go into the park, the Monument of the Americas. By the way, is it why is it called Monument of the Americas? Because it includes not only the Book of Mormon account in the Americas, but also the founding of America. It's a separate park. We call that the American Covenant Garden. It's smaller, but it has a big uh potential to become many sculptures. There are about 16 sculptures that are going in there, the rest go into the Book of Mormon side. But um I was making this clay sculpture of the savior, and President Packer and Elder Oaks were critiquing it. That's quite an experience, actually. Um, and um I remember President uh Packer was asking some questions about it. I had a baby alpaca on one side and then an old world lamb that the savior was holding. And he said, Why is the alpaca on there? And I explained why. And he says, People might question what that is. It should be as simple as possible. Remember, he's he likes that. So we took that off. And then Elder Oak said, Did you use yourself for a model? And I said, Well, what do you mean? I said, he looks pretty skinny and thin, you know. And I said, Well, you know, I mean, it's easy to copy your own hands and stuff, you know, because they're on the end of your arm. Uh, and he said, No, he says, You need to use a model that's much more powerful, bodybuilder, whatever. He says, this the savior was physically powerful, not only spiritually powerful. I understand that. So they want to sent me back to do more stuff. I had been talking with some of the church artists prior to that, um, and we were talking about a Jewish nose and the nose that I gave the savior, and uh he said, Um I I said to President Packer, I said, the art department people say I did the nose wrong. I should have given him a Jewish nose and I said Jewish noses it's something they're very ugly I mean the Jewish surgeons were the first ones to do rhinoplasty on Jews because they hated their nose anyway he chuckled a little bit like that you know but then he he did this he looked he went like this no no Jewish nose and he said it with a conviction that I took that to mean he knows what the savior looks like and when I brought that back as a marble statue um we presented it again to President Packer this was you know a year later almost and I'd gone to Italy and I'd carved this uh out and then I finished it in my garage and I had my uh young men out there standing with me and filing. It takes a lot of filing and standing you know to do a marble statue. And then I took it to Salt Lake and presented it to President Packer. He had uh again Elder Ballard there and um we were looking at it. I became friends for different reasons with Larry Miller. Larry Miller was with me uh and we were there together and he everybody was talking about this and that and about what the savior looked like President Packer said to Larry Miller because I didn't hear it but Larry Miller told me right after that he said did you hear what President Packer said I said no he said why do you argue with somebody who knows oh wow so President Packer was always known to be a man of the prophecy and um deep spiritual roots but it was a privilege to be tutored in a way from from those brethren. And um and I did I changed things I tried to do the way they wanted and uh President Hinckley put that sculpture in the MTC in the Woodruff uh building the Woodruff uh um administration building I know they're changing things around the rebuilding right now we'll see where it ends up um but after he looked at it he told me something I didn't expect he says can you wait around uh later today and I said well of course he said I want I want the first presidency to see the sculpture and um actually by the end of the day all the 12 had seen that that sculpture with the with the first presidency which is President Hinckley and Elder Faust and and President Monson so um after they saw it he called me over to the West conference room and he said President Hinckley would like to put this in the MTC however he wants you to put it up on a pedestal so people can see straight in the eyes of the savior and he wants you to take the nose and make it a little bit thinner right through here than what I had it. And I had some marble between the fingers take that marble out and thin the nose right here. And President Packer said to him no problem president we got a plastic serpent who can do that. And so I did I took my file and I filed it and sand it and did like they wanted to and put it in the MTC where we unveiled it. So that was really a marvelous experience to to do this and and to feel to feel the the power of the spirit helping me with these things. When I first arrived in Italy and I'd had a person there rough it out they didn't do much on the face and so I arrived after Audimon had gone home the compressors were still going I still had some air pressure using air hammer when you're cutting and carving marble and I was working on the savior's face and the light from the setting sun was coming through and that was that was a really powerful spiritual experience for me. I really felt the savior close. So powerful experience it was I felt it one more time other than that uh when I was working on the saviors um it was now clay life size and a quarter the savior has his finger up in the air and he's teaching the sermon at the temple that's 3rd Nephi 12 through 15 it was patterned after um a sculpture or actually a painting uh where there's teaching the the Sermon on the mount by Carl Bloch and everybody in the church recognizes that's teaching the Sermon on the mount and I use that pose uh for teaching because of the Book of Mormon version of that teaching at the temple and I was working on that it was around Christmas time and and um listening to the Christmas program. But anyway I was working on the Savior's face in clay and it literally seemed to come to life and looking at me magnifying my poor effort really powerful moments and there's so much of hard work in between it's all worth it so grateful to be able to do this so here we are at Heber many many times we've been thwarted and so it's sometimes you want to give up where are we going to build this park it was going to be it was going to be I mean gee where did we look we looked at we looked at St. George the Los Angeles area we looked at Naboo Illinois we looked all up and down at the Wasatch Front figuring that the people in Utah might prize it more than the people in Illinois for example and we uh we had about seven acres donated to us on top of Traverse Mountain if you know where that is that's on a uh they call it traverse because it's like 90 degrees from the Wasatch front sticks out like an isthmus and it divides Salt Lake Valley from Utah Valley and we were given some land that would look into both sides. And we're gonna put the savior right there. But uh um draper that had jurisdiction said we don't want this is going to be a visitor's uh quite a tourist uh feature we don't want any more traffic up there it's already choked we can't we no you can't build up there so we had to give the land back it was going to be at uh Thanksgiving point for two years if that's where it was going to go and uh at the board you know unanimously said yes that's where we want and after we had enough sculptures maquette sizes small ones we took it there and we presented them everybody was wow this is really going to be neat and then about a month later I get an email saying we think this should have its own venue. So I called up Karen Ashton I go what gives basically it's too big for her park and you need your own venue. So at the time I was disappointed but come to think about it now we are building a park where there will be no admission fee or maybe a dollar or something just to you know make sure we don't have uh vagrant people living in there we don't want that you know pay a dollar to get in or something families can get in for a few bucks and then if they have to go to the uh Thanksgiving point to see the sculptures there have to you know $100 to get in or $80 or something we want that different. So I have I have control of the sculptures uh but I have to raise the money. One other thing I'll tell you um Elder Pat or no Elder Oaks now President Oaks he said to me if you think you want the church to get involved with this you'll do a better job if you do it privately by yourselves. You can do a work for the church that the church cannot do. When the Tabernacle choir uh gives concerts we find they have the best results uh when there are no name tags no missionaries anything just done that way and so you'll be able to do a better job and I I can see why now looking back on that uh but now that means we have to raise the money so it's a multi-million dollar project we think it's uh at least 20 million right now give you finances we have about five million in assets and no debt we look really good we have 30 people almost here and most of them from Heber Valley some are in other states some in Salt Lake or Utah valleys but we have a meeting every month uh discussing what we're going to do we've got uh architect we've got a uh we've got a uh landscape architect in fact we have two we've got a civil engineer we got lawyers we have um public uh um uh what's it called publicists and people who are uh trying to uh get it built we've got a contractor people who uh want to build this we've got a stonemason a stone cutter we've just got lots of people all these people serve for free like I do I've never done anything to earn money but I'm still the largest donor in money and uh and of course in time right so somebody has to get it launched and that's what we're doing. Oh my goodness I love this I I mean when you think about that moment where you had this flash in your mind back in the temple 30 years ago did you at that time see the scale of like how big of a project this was or was it just like did you see like one little tiny you know to a certain extent yeah I mean I can see it in fact it's about the scale now of what I visioned envisioned that's right and the the savior is 18 feet tall took me a year to to scope that um I did that in in Pendleton at my colleague my friend's uh garage his car garage is even then we couldn't put the head on we had to keep the head off because it's so big you know it gone through the roof you know but uh yeah I I I did I mean it it matches up with my impressions at the time so and and how did it get into Park City then yeah how did you find that spot well it's not park city I mean that story after we were um after we lost the ground on top of Traverse Mountain um a friend of mine um who he kept saying you need to come to Heber Valley Hebrew Valley would love this and he's from Wasatch County the same one his grandfather ground uh homesteaded ground 150 years ago so he said the saints in Hebrew will really rush to support this and and that was like a prophecy that was exactly true uh uh the uh city council the mayor uh they just thank you thank you for coming here the ground that we were giving what happened we had a piece of ground which is actually right next to where the temple has been announced we didn't know that at the time we bought six acres I did on behalf of Monument of Americas it's a little small uh we're thinking could we still do it but then they announced the temple uh and about this same time uh guy by the name of Mike Bradshaw he is he handles all the real estate affairs for the Sorenson family the James uh James Sorensen Sr. They're the same family that donated quite a bit the construction of the Nauvoo temple they have this huge amount of land and Hebrew city uh they annexed it for 5,500 750 homes or whatever and as part of that they have a parcel of ground for a carve-out to give back to the community for some kind of amenities and in there they were thinking of a park and an amphitheater and something like us he came to our presentation and said how would you like 10 acres if we donated to you I says where's look around so he took up there and showed me where the ground is and I'm it's like oh this is where this is where it was meant to be my my regret and building it at Thanksgiving point was down in a hole uh I mean you know you drive by and you have to look down to see it and the savior down there that's the only thing that didn't match up with me and there was this windmill behind him you know one of those big wheel molds I I didn't want didn't like that but here you talk about you shall hold a light where it may be seen from afar this will be seen all over the valley it'll be uh all lit up we're gonna light it up at night and it's just perfect most of the valley could we'll be able to see it it's just beautiful so I said done we're gonna do this so we kept that six acres and I sold it in an appreciation and put that money into the sculpture so we're using that money to produce sculptures so it's it was just heaven the Lord knew it was going I just wish he let me know 30 years ago 25 years ago uh it would have saved a lot of hard work but you know we're dedicated so what are you what's your plan right now as far as like fundraising and you know like are you just asking for straight donations are you guys planning on doing some type of fundraising events do you have people who can be like monthly sponsors or one time you know how does that work we've had um because we're enlarging sculptures it gives us a unique uh ability to honor people big patrons because we sculpt them right into it uh our moroni and um some of the angels uh they're they're actually figures of people that a family wanted to honor we I have four I have four donors a hundred thousand dollars each and I I created for them a somebody they wanted to honor even posthumously a daughter who was killed in a tragic accident that's uh our our contractor that's how we came to know him he said I want my daughter to be kneeling at the feet of the savior the same place where the savior is teaching the Sermon on the Mount we I am we're creating figures that are at his feet as Nephites, Lamanites whatever, listening to the Savior preach the temp the sermon at the temple. That's one way we have of raising money uh I have one donor who's our largest donor he loved the title Liberty. I haven't said much about the title Liberty uh the title Liberty the sculpture that I created it uh it will be the largest sculpture in Utah uh bronze sculpture uh it has Moroni up on top of a mountain with his sword up there holding the title of Liberty which has some of the elements of the American flag on it on the other side is George Washington 12 feet tall he's holding the infant republic uh personified in this baby who's grasping the title of liberty and this infant has been given over to the father of our country by Columbia who is behind him around here who's the same Colombian that's on top of the Capitol Dome in Washington DC then you have a soldier from the Civil War so you had Revolutionary War Civil War I took one of the figures from uh Mount Suribachi and Iwo Jima who's pushing up the American flag he's pushing up the title of Liberty helping to do that and then a fourth uh soldier who uh fought in Desert Storm. One of my patients fought in Desert Storm and I said hey would you dress up in your modern army uniform and let me sculpt you and so I did and she's down there you know at the bottom kind of fixing the title Liberty poll and uh so all of this is is uh it's kind of a 360 degree piece uh and Moroni's sword the tip of his sword to the ground will be about 25 feet it's huge we unveiled that at the BYU stadium in front of the BYU stadium here uh on the 4th of July last year oh my god that's uh detail like the way that you're allowing families to choose people loved ones of theirs to be part of these sculptures and to just live on forever in this and such a such a beautiful testament to the different stories in the Book of Mormon and and you know to the senior self it's oh my gosh there I mean if the viewers if your viewers want to see a whole presentation on it the one that's up to date we had our groundbreaking in May and it's a good introduction to the different sculptures and so forth and what we're doing but it's on YouTube.

Alisha Coakley:

I can give you the call numbers for that we can put that link in the description for everybody too.

Steve Neal:

Yeah and because it's worth watching um I think it's spiritually it's a spiritual kind of production but um it kind of shows what we're doing where we've come from I was going to say that the donor who was really taken by the title of Liberty that whole sculpture put up most of the money for that I mean he was paying $20,000 a month until he had contributed about $400,000. That piece was six hundred and fifty thousand dollars to cast wow that's right that's phenomenal they're not what what what goes into creating a uh bronze sculpture like what's the process okay I'll take you through this real fast everybody thinks it's a simple thing uh you know you got a baby's booty are you gonna bronze it yeah all right yeah you just spray bronze on it they're not bronze but no that's that's bronze paint what it takes okay usually the original that you're creating is destroyed in the process of making the mold all right so a big piece like the title Liberty I just talked to you about was cut up into about 400 pieces. Okay each one of those pieces then was uh molded they it's by silicon a silicon kind of a paint they paint it over that and let that dry make sure it's thick enough then they'll put what we call a mother mold over that something which will not allow any kind of distortion it's rigid. So you got the soft pliable underneath and then the rigid you take off the mother mold you open this silicon mold if it's a small enough piece you can completely encase it it has a seam you pull it open and you take the original you throw it away now the mold is what is important you go to the wax room and you close up the mold and it usually has a hole and you'll pour wax melted wax in there and swirl it around let that harden you go to the spruing room the spruing room they sit down they'll chase it make sure everything is fine then they put on these pieces of wax called sprues and they'll stick it there and maybe over here and then they put a cup a wax cup on the top so you got this wax cup and then you've got the piece and you've got the spruce you take that and you go over the slurry room dip it into something looks like antifreeze and then you put some silica sand around it and you get coarser and coarser gravel let it all harden take that put it into an oven burn out all that wax. Now you got a hard silica shell you take that stick it into maybe a trough of sand you heat up the bronze you melt it and then you pour that into it 1700 degrees or whatever you pour that into it let it harden let it cool break off the shell get that piece of metal and then you weld it together with the other 400 pieces and that's how you build the sculpture that's why it costs so much oh wow goodness like how do people even figure that out yeah right how do people even figure that out how did like well it from the from the 1500s they used to do it in one shot you know they didn't break it up into pieces so you had one shot at getting your wax to become bronze you know so when you're coming up with 18 foot bronze statues the logistics behind that is just mind-boggling this this is the savior it's part of a a production if you will uh president package didn't want that alpaca on there but for this I put it back in and because it's a dichotomy the savior sits up on um basically a foundation which is the gold plates and the gold plates is now a waterfall and there's a pool and a little island that the savior sits on but the water flows over the plates symbolic of the truth and falls down into a pool where there is a world and then on this side you have the eastern or the western hemisphere and the eastern hemisphere and they look like you see that we call them the hands of man. They look like adoring hands like this and they're life-sized people from the different destinations of the world both halves of the world other sheep I have that is the name of the piece so it's a presentation and that's kind of the central figure of the of the park uh and as you come into the park and through the visitor center into the garden into the park there's a arch of triumph as you walk through it it frames the savior up above and it's pretty spectacular we have a a virtual tour of that which is on uh the YouTube uh channel that I did that production so you can see how it is it's beautiful.

Alisha Coakley:

Yeah wow so here's a question for you especially with um and I'm not going political per se I'm just we're just in that time period right like we know that things are just gonna get better and better and worse and worse at the same time like we're gonna have more of that separation between good and able to get to the crisis return. So when you're doing something like this and you're putting all this manpower and this money and this energy and this this talent into these amazing pieces. Is there a part of you that's scared about what happens if someone decides to go destroy them or to vandalize them or you know to graffiti all of them you know like do you do and do you have measures in place that are going to be well let me tell you a story.

Steve Neal:

Have you ever been to Florence, Italy Firenza? Not yet I've been I've been a bunch because I spent a long time in Italy. Wow for 500 years they have not needed anybody to look over the sculptures that are in the Palazzo Vecchio or the old place where for a long time they had the the David there. They've now put that indoors uh and other some other sculptures that were done um uh Cenini Benvenuto with Perseus and Medusa and all of these famous sculptures they've never needed anybody to watch over them until our generation yeah that tells me something yeah it needs protection so I mean fence around it when it's a park up and running there will be a security guard and there are cameras so then we can kind of keep tabs on that. It's private so it means we can eject whoever we need to you know um but yeah we we know that uh at least in certain um recent political um administrations and so forth they were pretty lax on that stuff they're they're clamping down a little more but we're a pretty conservative community here and I think we'll have cooperation that possibility is almost there.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah but Heber is a pretty nice laid back community so you probably have a little bit of a safe haven over there.

Steve Neal:

Yeah yeah that's true so how how far along are you in the development process of the actual park um we have the land it's been given in two parcels the groundbreaking was done in the first parcel we're getting this the next parcel here any day and then we're we've been working on the landscaping engineering and the designing that's why if you look at that virtual tour some of that is actually taken from what we want to do in terms of landscaping. But we don't have a road there yet and we don't have uh the the utilities yet so it's raw ground and you'll see in that movie that we're right on the ground where the park's going to be but it's raw land. So that has to be terraced and all that kind of stuff but we've been planning that we're in the planning stages uh we hope if we get the road and uh we're we can do some uh cuts and so forth we can start to do the foundations of these things next year uh our target for opening is 2029 we still need about 15 million dollars so yeah what do we do for uh I'll tell you if there's anybody listening who has a legacy and they want to memorialize somebody in the family and they want to give him they love the Book of Mormon and they want to do something we actually um can sculpt them into something where their family will know who they are and because it's a spiritual thing we're not going to say stuff like this sculpture was donated by we're not doing that right we're doing something a lot cooler we have them do their testimony and we're gonna make a little bronze plaque put it on stone and just set that by there it doesn't say they did this but their testimony is right there. So people will really have a way of memorializing in this uh it this is uh second to none um a lot of people confuse us with with Angela Johnson's work at Thanksgiving point her we were supposed to be the Book of Mormon and she her place was supposed to be in the New Testament but then um we met with her seven years ago and we were kind of thinking do we want to combine forces she says no I want to do this thing on my own I think we kind of encouraged her to do her own Book of Mormon thing and she she fundraised and she got it done in seven years and beat us to the punch. So we were the original but you know now we're like oh me too but this was uh uh the stuff that we're doing takes a lot of time and effort they're they're uh very meticulous and uh we're happy to be where we are in Hebrew nice yeah I mean it feels like your whole career and and has kind of led you up to this moment and this is your time right this is your time to make your dream a reality I'll give you one more spiritual talk spiritual thought two years ago in August of 19 of 2023 uh for months it was getting more painful for me to do surgery and reach up like that I what is the matter with me I felt like I'd separated my ribs I did that once upon Upon a time. Anyway, I called up one of my friends. I said, This is not right. You need to do a CAT scan on me. So I ordered a CAT scan. And uh he calls me up on the phone. He goes, Steve, it doesn't look good. And I knew, I knew, I knew what the diagnosis was, it's multiple myeloma. It's one of the blood cancers. And I was at the time just, oh my heavens, what's gonna go on? The people that I knew, even colleagues, when they were given that diagnosis, they had died within weeks or months of their diagnosis. I thought I was gonna die in 2022. Wow. And um, I remember I was working on something, sculpture, and it was a song in the background. I was operate and do sculpture with music. I have for 40 years. And um, it wasn't a spiritual song necessarily, but the lyrics came through. Have a little faith, and my ears picked up, and the spirit gave me right here. Steve, have a little faith in your father in heaven. That was about 800 days ago. And not a day goes by that I don't thank God for another day. In those two years, I've been able to um enlarge 10 big panels as well as multiple other figures. I am just producing sculpture at the faster rate than I ever have. After one month of treatment, I went into remission and I've been in remission ever since. I have my old energy. I I've always been blessed with a ton of energy. I have it all. I'm able to get down on the floor at 72 and a half and stand on my head, do whatever I have to do to do this sculpture, and I can still do that. So I thank the Lord every day. My my life's in his hands every day. And I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. I said to my oncologist, I says, Hey, I need about six years to do this. You know, I'd get you six years. He says, Heck, we've got treatments coming down the pike that is looking really good. We haven't even tried them on you, but uh there they can't detect any of the plasma cells, the cancerous plasma cells in my body, my marrow, anywhere. There's no evidence of it. And I have all my energy back. And I don't have medicine to do anymore. I still have my medical license, but I treat my family and my friends, so I don't see patients. I'm not doing any surgeries, I'm just doing sculpture every day, doing a great job.

Alisha Coakley:

Man. Well, congratulations on that. That's a huge, huge thing to be able to go into her mission. Um I imagine for you, it just kind of solidifies what it is that you want to do, what you want to finish, and how important this project is to you. Is that really accurate? Man, you are just like you're just phenomenal. I this has been such an amazing story, and I uh just thank you so much for coming on here today. I appreciate it.

Steve Neal:

Thank you, thank you for having me and for telling people about the Monument Americas. Um, we do we still need some fundraising. Uh it won't happen till our target is 2030. That's 200 years since the Book of Mormon was printed. We want a big celebration. So 2029 is the target date for us to get open. Uh our our largest donor has, I mean, we're in his will for multi-million, so we'll always have an endowment fund. This is gonna fly for sure. We just want it before 2030. So anyway.

Alisha Coakley:

So, what's the best way if someone wants to, I mean, because every little bit helps, right? So, like even if you're not able to donate $100,000.

Steve Neal:

If you're donate, if you can donate something, of the Americas.org. You can donate through there. Okay. If you go to that webpage, you can see it. Uh, and if you have serious in designs, you think you can help us in some way, then uh email me or you and send it on to me. Uh, I meet with people. Just the other day, we have the we need some new carpet in this place we moved to in Hebrew. And the carpet person comes from Utah Valley and he sees what we're doing, and he was really touched. He said he came into my studio. And we said, my wife says, Yeah, you want to donate? Well, I can't give a hundred thousand. And I said, Hey, there's carpet in the visitor center. Why did you donate carpet? I can do that, he says. I mean, we find people like this all the time. Can I do this? Can I do that? So God blessed him.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah. Well, and and God works in mysterious ways. I mean you've seen that in your life, right? So yeah, I think I think you can make this happen. And we never know who's listening, right? So that's right.

Steve Neal:

No, we'll make it. It's fine. We want it, we want it in faster time, you know, not 20 years. Exactly.

Alisha Coakley:

Wow.

Scott Brandley:

Awesome. Well, this has been amazing, Steve. Um, any last thoughts you'd like to share before we kind of wrap things up?

Steve Neal:

Well, how you started out that sentence, isn't it true? Uh, these rich blessings that I received a tremendous sense of satisfaction. Um, with the diagnosis I have, you know, are you ready to meet the savior? Well, um, I've had some powerful spiritual uh confirmations. You're doing right, you're doing a good job. These are works of righteousness, and that's been very gratifying to me. Hasn't been easy, but I'm keeping my covenants. I'm a covenant-keeping person. And that's how you get God's the richest of God's blessings, are when you make covenants and keep them.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah.

Alisha Coakley:

I love that. Well, thank you so much for coming on here today, for sharing your story, for sharing your talent with everybody, and and for sharing this vision that you've had of something that I just I really think it's gonna be so, so great in lighting the world. Um to all of our listeners, guys, thank you for tuning in too. Please, please, please make sure that you guys go visit these links that we're gonna put in here. Go check out what they are doing with this amazing monument park in Kiever. Um, and if you feel so inclined to be able to donate um anything at all, that would be fantastic. Um make sure you reach out and let me know what you guys can do. Um, but the easiest thing that you can do right now is comment and do your five-second missionary work. Share, share, share. And the more people we can get this episode in front of, the more opportunity we have to be able to help Steve and his his whole crew to make this a reality.

Steve Neal:

Well, thank you.

Alisha Coakley:

Thank you. Thank you both.

Scott Brandley:

And if anybody else has a story that they'd like to share, go to latterdaylights.com or email us at latterdaylights at gmail.com and let's have you on the show just like we had with Steve. And we'd love to have you back, Steve, by the way. Yeah, we'd love to give us updates as you go so that we can we can continue to share your story. And I'm sure our listeners will want to see kind of where you're at along the way.

Steve Neal:

Yeah, we're making good progress.

Alisha Coakley:

Absolutely. And you know, Steve, if you have any uh if you have any any um statues that are wearing poop earrings, you can design them after me. I'll take that spot so great.

Scott Brandley:

Awesome. Well, thanks again, Steve, for coming on. We really appreciate you. And thanks everyone for tuning in. And we will talk to you next week with another episode from Latter Day Lights. Till then, take care.

Steve Neal:

Thanks, Scott. Thanks, Alisha. Bye-bye.

Scott Brandley:

Bye-bye.

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Scott Brandley

Host
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Alisha Coakley

Co-host