Word: zurmuhlen
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...deepest polarizations of the human intellect caught up with Frederick H. Zurmuhlen, New York City Commissioner of Public Works. As a result, a half-ton statue of the Prophet Mohammed last week was lying flat on its back in a Newark storehouse...
...this got back to Commissioner Zurmuhlen when his engineers reported a few years ago that time was eating away at the statues atop the Appellate Division Courthouse. Newspapers ran a story that the ten lawgivers would be lifted from their pedestals on the building's roof and repaired. When Mohammed's name appeared among the rest, the ambassadors of Indonesia, Egypt and Pakistan told the U.S. State Department, on behalf of their Moslem peoples, that the Prophet's image should not go up again...
...State Department sent two emissaries to explain the matter to Commissioner Zurmuhlen. The question was laid before the justices of the Appellate Division. All agreed that Mohammed would not go up again-even though the danger that any large number of New Yorkers would take to worshiping the statue was, admittedly, minimal. As a result of diplomatic iconoclasm, the Newark stonecutter who repaired the statues was asked to take Mohammed quietly away. The other statues were closed up to conceal the gap, and now Zoroaster has Mohammed's old place on the southwest corner, facing toward Staten Island...
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