And finally… Last living Mount Rushmore construction worker dies
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The man believed to be the last living worker who helped construct Mount Rushmore National Memorial has died.
Donald ‘Nick’ Clifford was one of nearly 400 men and women who worked on the iconic American monument.
His wife, Carolyn Clifford, says he died Saturday aged 98 at a hospice in Rapid City, South Dakota.
At 17, Nick Clifford was the youngest worker hired to work at Mount Rushmore. He operated a winch that carried workers up and down the mountain where the faces of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln were carved, and he drilled holes for dynamite.
Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum and his son, Lincoln, decided in 1938 to field a baseball team and hired Clifford, who already was a veteran pitcher and right fielder, the Rapid City Journal reported.
Clifford worked on Mount Rushmore from 1938-40, earning 55 cents an hour. The memorial is now visited by nearly three million people annually.
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