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Crime & Safety

'Rainman' Cometh Without Umbrella

Out and Around: Geneva's "Rainman" statue is missing his umbrella. You'd think he could use it in this heat ... or with these thunderstorms.

Alert Patch reader Colin Campbell captured these photos and sent a note asking, "What gives?"

Geneva's "Rainman" statue, which was donated in part or in full by developer Kent Shodeen, sits proudly at the Dodson 8 Public Plaza, right across the street from the  .

It has been celebrated in posters of Geneva, available at the , and is in general—and in my opinion—a pretty cool sculpture. Part of that is because it's also a fountain, with water dripping constantly from the poor rainman's umbrella.

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Right now, though, our "Rainman" will have to let a smile be his umbrella.

Because his is gone.

Find out what's happening in Genevawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

I sent e-mails to the Geneva Police Department and the Geneva Cultural Arts Commission, and received a quick response from alert police Cmdr. Julie Nash, who said there was no police report filed.

"It appears that it was damaged, and it is currently being fixed," she said.

I called the Cultural Arts Commission phone number, talked to Paul Evans, and he said the is handling the repairs.

So, I called Public Works Director Dan Dinges, and he said, indeed, the statue was someone damaged and his folks are working diligently to make repairs.

"It got damaged by somebody, and we were concerned that someone might have been hanging on the umbrella when it broke—because that umbrella is very heavy," Dinges said. "So we took it down to try to figure out how to repair it."

Dinges said the umbrella stem was a special order from the original artist, so he's hoping Public Works Department personnel can find a way to fix it without going back to the artist—which could be expensive.

Dinges said the umbrella would go back up, but he's not sure when.

"Not at this point," he said. "It all depends on whether we can use the existing  stem."

Hopefully, some Mary Poppins-esque city employee can find enough magic to fix our Rainman's umbrella,—because we're sure he'd like back. It's , after all, and we've had .

Also, to quote another Rainman, it's 10 minutes to Wapner.

"We're going to try to get it back as soon as possible," Dinges said.

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