Zena was putting her talents to work on a project to create a remembrance hall for the greatest contributors to American society, supported by the civic-minded Miami Beach Public Library Forum (modeled after Boston’s venerable Ford Hall Forum, a lecture series for informing a democratic citizenry). The distinguished Linus Pauling, the only winner of two unshared Nobel Prizes in Chemistry (1954) and Peace (1962), was for her the most natural candidate. Pauling in his dedicated efforts for health and peace was an indefatigable public advocate for limiting nuclear weapons and banning their testing in the atmosphere.

    

The Making of the Portrait

    

Zena pursued Pauling in unrelenting arrangements to sculpt his portrait for over a year and a half while she was teaching art at Miami-Dade Community College (today’s Miami-Dade University). Pauling had just left his 42-year affiliation with California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and become Research Professor in the Physical and Biological Sciences at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, the Santa Barbara think tank.

               

Undaunted by 3,000 miles and many letters about scheduling, Zena traveled cross-country in the summer of 1966 to meet him at his ranch on the Big Sur, California coast. When Zena arrived in August, Linus had his leg in a cast. He had broken it on one of his beloved hikes in the hills. She called it a misfortune that “proved to be a lucky stroke for the sitting.” The normally active scientist and ebullient intellectual, while not given to small talk, was a perfectly willing model.