09/09/2022
Flickinger Glassworks sits about as close to the Statue of Liberty as one can get. You can literally stroll to the end of the shop’s pier and wave to her standing on her island perch in New York Harbor. Charles Flickinger additionally knows her inside out — from his first glass bending job when he helped restore the flame in her raised torch.
It was three months before her hundredth birthday on July 4, 1986. The flame’s glass parts were broken and missing. Charles’s employer at the time, Rambusch Decorating, had been contracted to repair it. So every day, Bruce Gutilius, Michael Davis and Charles (see above in order) boarded a work boat to her island. They removed the broken glass and constructed molds of the missing parts. They bent new glass, reinstalling everything in time for her birthday extravaganza.
Millions of spectators ringed the harbor that day. Fighter planes shot overhead. 25,000 new citizens were sworn in around the country. Before the fireworks commenced, President Ronald Reagan pushed the button that relit her torch, saying, “We are the keepers of the flame of liberty. We hold it high for the world to see.”
That initial bent glass assignment reinforced Charles’s desire to start his own business specializing in slumped glass. One year later he opened Flickinger Glassworks.
