A sculpture created for Hippach Field’s centennial year celebration

FARMINGTON – The six-foot tall silhouette of a circa 1900 baseball player came as a nice surprise to many attending the Hippach Field celebration on Saturday.

While the speeches and a vintage rules baseball game drew hundreds of people to mark the 100th anniversary of the opening of the playing fields, the unveiled sculpture stood in the middle of it all, fetching many compliments.

Its story, like that of the park’s founding, is about a family’s dedication to each other.

A student in his teens, Howard Hippach of Chicago, Illinois, attended the prestigious Abbott School for boys (open from 1844 until its eventual close in 1930), once located next to the park, at the south end of the University of Maine at Farmington campus. Hippach, a talented athlete, was killed in an automobile accident while on a visit home from school in Farmington. His grief-stricken family purchased the property next to the school and built the park in 1916 as a place to forever hold athletic events in memory of their son. Ever since then, Hippach Field has played host to countless games and sporting events during the last century.

The idea to build a sculpture to commemorate the 100 years of play at Hippach Field actually began with a father who admits to a passion for working with metal and building sculptures that’s almost as big as his devotion to his two children.

Metal artist, Henry Noonkester, a power plant millwright by day, is Seth Noonkester’s dad. Noonkester’s son is the assistant director of the Farmington Parks & Recreation Department who was hired to the position even before his 2015 graduation from UMF.

On a trip to visit his son’s workplace at the Community Center last June, Henry Noonkester took a photograph of his son standing in front for the center. He noted at the time that the building’s facade needed some kind of sculptural detail.

“He said something’s missing on the front and maybe we can make something,” Seth Noonkester remembers his dad as saying. Then, nothing happened for months until the Hippach Field centennial discussions started up. “I thought, wow, maybe we can do something for the Hippach celebration,” Seth Noonkester said. His dad wholeheartedly agreed.

They made a small, stainless steel replica of their idea for the much larger model they had in mind and presented it to the committee members working on the centennial event to see if there was any interest in a sculpture the Noonkesters wanted to give as a gift to the town. The committee loved the concept and gave them the go-ahead.

The father and son then went to work, researching vintage 1900’s baseball players because they wanted everything to look and be true to Howard Hippach’s time. So much so the younger Noonkester went on Craig’s List and found sheets of steel that would have been around in Hippach’s day at the Pepperell Mill in Biddeford, which is undergoing renovations and selling off salvage metal original to the mill complex’s establishment. More salvage metal that fit the bill was found at an old coal-burning facility in New Hampshire.

Seth Noonkester “found an old school silhouette online,” Henry Noonkester said. The image was printed at full size and a metal sheet was cut out using the printed player as a guide, but he admitted with a laugh, “I was kind of winging it.” This is the same guy who welded together a 28-foot, six-inch tall replica of the Eiffel Tower for his daughter Alisha’s prom night at Sanford High School. The prom’s theme, after all, was “A Night in Paris” and she, being in charge of the prom’s decorations, had simply asked her dad for some help.

Now in the midst of a sculpture for the park his son helps take care of, Henry Noonkester then built a home-plate-shaped metal stage for the sculpture to stand on, which included using vintage bolts to hide the welding lines because there wasn’t this kind of welding back in Hippach’s day. It is also nod to the second Industrial Revolution at the end of the 19th century into the early 20th century when steel companies ruled.

“It’s when our country was being built and ballfields were a way to get away from that,” he said.

The Noonkesters each traveled back and forth from the father’s home in Acton, Maine, to Farmington working on pieces and then transporting them here to work on in the Highway Department’s salt shed. Seth Noonkester ground smooth the silhouette’s edges. The final pieces were welded together, with thanks by the Noonkesters to the Highway Department for use of their welding equipment, on the very morning of its unveiling. The piece was buffed and given its worn-looking patina by applying peroxide, vinegar with a pinch of salt added.

“I think it’s going to get neater as it goes,” Henry Noonkester said of the sculpture’s patina. He did attend the first part of the centennial celebration on Saturday and said it “was an honor to meet members of Hippach family.” But he had to leave early because he had been called back to work at the plant.

The stainless steel replica made as a sample of the sculpture will not go unused. It will be used as a trophy to list the local baseball league champions for each year, like hockey’s Stanley Cup. The Hippach Field sculpture will be permanently installed on a granite slab foundation keeping watch over the major league field.

Of his work, Henry Noonkester said, “I’m kind of humbled that people thought it was worthy enough” to mark Hippach Field’s centennial. Then he added with a chuckle, “I would have made it bigger, if I could’ve.”