ST PAUL, Minn. — On a sunny January afternoon, a humble Tom Klug carves the straight sides of an ice block into a curve. He's working on a rose sculpture set to be about waist high and a foot wide.
"I don't consider myself a professional by any means, but I am an ice carver," said Klug, who is indeed a longtime ice carver for the annual St. Paul Winter Carnival.
Klug brought in a team of carvers to Rice Park on Monday to create a total of five sculptures: a hockey goalie, mermaid, monster, orchid and the rose. All of the designs come not from their pens but those of Children's Minnesota patients.
"I hope I can make this as beautiful as her drawing," Klug said of the rose, which a teenager named Lyla Mamun originally drew.
Mamun was 2 years old when she was hospitalized.
"My parents had decided to take me in and they were told that I had a brain tumor," Mamun said. "They had gotten me into surgery because this thing, it was like big … a couple days later, it had grown back to basically the same size."
Now 15, she still goes back to Children's Minnesota for annual brain scans.
"I'm loads better now and able to walk around and have fun," she said.
Fun – like drawing a rose and watching it get the Elsa effect. Mamun says she loves to draw.
"What do you think of it so far?" Klug asked, mid-carve.
"It's super cool, I love it," Mamun responded.
Klug says he and his now 10-year-old son came up with the idea, and a donation from APi Group made it possible to execute. Like Mamun, Klug's daughter was hospitalized when she was young, too. She was only an infant.
"Fourteen years ago, my daughter spent about a week at Children's Minnesota," Klug said. "She had kidney reflux is what we called it. Her respiratory system shut down, her face turned purple … They really helped us out that week when we were there, and I've always had a special spot in my heart for Children's."
The kids' sculptures join several others carved over the weekend in Rice Park as part of the St. Paul Winter Carnival. Monday's sunshine begs the question of how long they'll last.
"Oh, that is the good question," Klug said. "These unseasonable temperatures are just not playing in our favor. The biggest problem we might experience today is actually the sun, not really necessarily the temperature. It's the sun. The sun will actually shoot through the ice and crack it."
"I'm hoping it lasts the night for other people to come see it," Mamun said.
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