Syracuse (WSYR-TV) - Saturday will mark the first time since September 11, 2001 that the public will be allowed back into the crown of the Statue of Liberty.
For the past eight years, only a very few people have been allowed up there. One of them is a Syracuse man, and he's made quite the habit out of it.
Dennis Heaphy started his career as a tinsmith as a kid in the family business; the statue has been his place of work the past ten years. Heaphy will be there Saturday when the crown is reopened to visitors.
It's the way he says it should be.
"It is an incredible experience to climb the stairs, the spiral staircase, the double helix staircase going up through the middle, and actually experience the architecture of it," Heaphy says.
The inside structure is in fact Eiffel’s first tower. Not only has Heaphy worked in the statue, he's actually slept in the crown.
Back when people were still allowed in, he had to wait until visitors left, leaving him about a three-hour window to do his work at night before the last boat left Ellis Island. One night, though, he worked well past that, leaving him no choice but to spend the night.
"That night, I finished 25 of the easier windows to repair, and when I was tired I just got my perspective again and realized that the tablet was outside the window, and put down the bed roll and went to sleep," says Heaphy.
Some of the tools Heaphy started with when he was 11 years old are being used on the Statue of Liberty to work on the skin of the statue, which is just slightly thicker than a penny.
"It is a strange realization as to where you are every time, because it isn't like I'm working on a duplex in the Bronx," he says.
The base of the statue reopened in 2004. As for the crown, visitors will now be taken in groups of 30, to stand atop the statue's head and peer from under the spikes of her crown. Reservations for that option are suggested.
