October 30, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, sculptor Sabin Howard has spent years shaping the story of World War I in bronze. His National World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C. captures the quiet strength of soldiers, nurses, and families who carried the weight of the Great War. Rather than focusing on battlefields or weapons, his work centers on the people who lived through them and the humanity that endured. Through his words and his art, Howard gives form to sacrifice. Hear stories of a lost generation from the sculptor whose memorial to them will soon show this reality to visitors in Washington, D.C. Here's Sabin with the story of how his masterpiece came to be.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next a
story from someone you might not know, but whose work
you'll certainly see in our nation's capital soon. Sculptor Theaban
Howard Saban has created our capital's first monument to World
War One. It's absolutely beautiful and tells a remarkable story.
(00:31):
You're Saban himself to tell us about his muses and
how he approached the creation of the monument. Take it away, Saban.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I knew virtually nothing about World War One. It is
not something taught in our school system because it's uscerped
by like the Great Depression and then World War Two.
And I mean honestly, we didn't. We lost one hundred
and sixteen thousand men, and you compare that to like
Europe where you lose full villages. It's complete decimation. It
(01:03):
was a punch on a nose for this country. But
after getting into the project in the first nine months,
I was like fascinated. And here's the thing I learned
early on that the way to portray these people that
had been in this war was not to read history books,
(01:24):
because the history books spoke more about what the governments
did and how they proceeded forward against each other. So
what I did read a little bit to understand more.
But that led me to looking at a lot of
images of men getting on trains with their fiances and
(01:45):
their families waving goodbye to them, and then seeing men
on the front and seeing how young they were. And
I came to this realization that had hundreds of people
coming at me telling me, Okay, you need to portray horses,
you need to tray barbed wire. How about you put
some biplanes in. What about machine guns and tanks, and
(02:07):
then we need to do some no man's lad and
trenches and mud and sandbag. And I go to the
bathroom one day and there on the wall is the
poster of the Last Judgment by Michelangelo. And I have
this voice in my head that day that says, do
what you know, And that moment led me to the clarity, Yes,
(02:29):
you know people, and you know how to pose people.
Go get the uniforms and find actors and kids and
pose them and get some movement into this thing so
everybody gets it when they go look at it, that
this was a war fought by human beings, and that's
what I had to portray. But you say, okay, there
(02:51):
were no World War One people alive to speak to
to see what it was like. But there are a
lot of guys out there who have been to war
and there around right now, and it's the same different floor.
War is war.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
You go.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
If you look at I know, movies of like Brave Heart,
you see butchery and technology has increased the butchery to
you know, massive amounts of people.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
And World War One, the one thing I did see
very clearly was you moved from a gentleman's war where
there's these these groups of men marching in unison together
towards the other side, and then all of a sudden,
you're going to interject, okay, we got it now, a
machine gun, a fifty cow, a machine gun similar to
(03:51):
a fifty cow firing bullets, and it's just like, let's
mow it down in no man's land, and so massive,
massive destruction. You get like huge amounts of deaths in
six hours, and like the Soul, it's like seventy five
thousand men dying in a day. And I'm not being facetious,
(04:13):
and I have complete respect for the families and people
that lost their lives on nine to eleven, but you
cannot comprehend how much massacre has occurred in like a
war like World War One, and when you do comprehend it,
when you do see when you start to speak to veterans,
(04:35):
when say, you know and how horrible experiences can be
of someone right next to them losing their limbs or
losing an arm and an eyeball and blood's gushing out
all of a sudden. It's like it's not a movie.
It's actual freaking reality. And then you go home and
(04:57):
you got to like live with this. When you're back
home home as a civilian, it's like, that's okay. This
is like horror story beyond anything that you could comprehend.
It's like I learned that when you think you're at
the bottom of the basement, there are five more levels
that you can fall through. It began in a studio
(05:24):
in the South Bronx, and I began using real soldiers
that had seen combat because I needed to become just
aware and be able to depict things that would actually
tell how horrible it is when someone is sent into
a hell and expected to perform. And one of the
(05:46):
people that I hired and worked with on this project
was Ricky's Umbrano. Ricky's Mbrano was a marine. He went
to Afghanistan and he came back completely jacked up, shell shocked,
and that was called PTSD today. And he went to
the VA and they gave him fifteen different pills and
(06:08):
he felt like a zombie. He stopped taking the pills
and then shortly thereafter, one night he decided he couldn't,
he couldn't just go on, and he decided to take
a lot of these pills. And he's lying in his
bed and then his voice inside of him comes up
and goes, you get up, and it lifted him up
(06:30):
and he walked to the bathroom and force himself to
throw up. And from that moment on he realized that
nobody was coming to save him. He had to save himself.
And he learned how to deal without the pills by
(06:52):
exercising every day two to three hours very intensely. And
he worked for me for almost two years, and he
was the figure for the shell shocked soldier as well
as many of the other figures. He was full time
for me, and he was the body that we used
(07:12):
for the man carrying the flag as well, and the
soldier who is shell shocked. I used a ranger who
I heard stories from him of like he I saw
a scar on his shoulder and like, hey, Chris, how'd
you get that scar on your shoulder? And He's like,
we entered into a room and this Iraqi stabbed me
(07:35):
in a shoulder and I pulled the knife out and
I put it right into his throat and he didn't
walk out of that room. And Chris is the nicest
man that I've ever met. He has a huge heart.
And I think that there is a misunderstanding in our
society of what it takes to become part of the military.
How functional in some ways these soldiers are. They are
(07:58):
trained to enter into war, they are not trained to
re enter back into society. And so I have a friend, James,
who does very well as a building contractor, and he's
from the UK, and he asked me to be one
(08:19):
of the models. And I was very surprised, and I said, well, James,
I'd love to have you work with me. I don't
understand why, but you want to be a model. That's good.
He's came and posed a few times, and then I said,
I asked, hey, James, can you explain why you know what?
Why is this so important to you? Because he was
(08:40):
doing really well. He was bringing a lot of juice
to the photoshoots that we were doing, and I was
like a little puzzled, and he goes, well, okay, i'll
tell you after we finished work today. And so he
comes over and he goes, all right, So here's the story.
My great uncle and my great grandfather there were both
(09:00):
in World War One. My great grandfather did not return.
My great uncle did return, and when he came home,
he proceeded to shoot his wife with his service revolver,
shot his daughter, and then he shot himself. And I
grew up in that home, and so it obviously had
(09:21):
a huge impact on him and the ghosts that lived
in his past, and that experience taught me what this
war and all wars are about. I really gave it
my all to show them, in everything that they have
(09:44):
gone through and all their humanity, in a way that
is heroic, that speaks well of them, because this is
what they deserve. And the reason I'm harping on this
is because I don't think there is anything more noble
than to get of ones all physically and mentally to
one's country and then come back and not be thanked.
(10:08):
So the biggest element that this sculpture does is show
the transformation of war historically in World War One, and
it is identifiable for any conflict that has happened since then.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
And a terrific job on the production and editing by
our own Monta Montgomery. And you've been listening to Sabin
Howard who created the National World War One Memorial. It'll
be unveiled in Pershing Park and Washington, DC this September.
Go to Sabanhoward dot com to learn more, figure out
how you can support the great cause and great work
(10:44):
he's doing that will move you and we'll move your
family
And we returned to our American stories. Up next a
story from someone you might not know, but whose work
you'll certainly see in our nation's capital soon. Sculptor Theaban
Howard Saban has created our capital's first monument to World
War One. It's absolutely beautiful and tells a remarkable story.
(00:31):
You're Saban himself to tell us about his muses and
how he approached the creation of the monument. Take it away, Saban.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I knew virtually nothing about World War One. It is
not something taught in our school system because it's uscerped
by like the Great Depression and then World War Two.
And I mean honestly, we didn't. We lost one hundred
and sixteen thousand men, and you compare that to like
Europe where you lose full villages. It's complete decimation. It
(01:03):
was a punch on a nose for this country. But
after getting into the project in the first nine months,
I was like fascinated. And here's the thing I learned
early on that the way to portray these people that
had been in this war was not to read history books,
(01:24):
because the history books spoke more about what the governments
did and how they proceeded forward against each other. So
what I did read a little bit to understand more.
But that led me to looking at a lot of
images of men getting on trains with their fiances and
(01:45):
their families waving goodbye to them, and then seeing men
on the front and seeing how young they were. And
I came to this realization that had hundreds of people
coming at me telling me, Okay, you need to portray horses,
you need to tray barbed wire. How about you put
some biplanes in. What about machine guns and tanks, and
(02:07):
then we need to do some no man's lad and
trenches and mud and sandbag. And I go to the
bathroom one day and there on the wall is the
poster of the Last Judgment by Michelangelo. And I have
this voice in my head that day that says, do
what you know, And that moment led me to the clarity, Yes,
(02:29):
you know people, and you know how to pose people.
Go get the uniforms and find actors and kids and
pose them and get some movement into this thing so
everybody gets it when they go look at it, that
this was a war fought by human beings, and that's
what I had to portray. But you say, okay, there
(02:51):
were no World War One people alive to speak to
to see what it was like. But there are a
lot of guys out there who have been to war
and there around right now, and it's the same different floor.
War is war.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
You go.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
If you look at I know, movies of like Brave Heart,
you see butchery and technology has increased the butchery to
you know, massive amounts of people.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
And World War One, the one thing I did see
very clearly was you moved from a gentleman's war where
there's these these groups of men marching in unison together
towards the other side, and then all of a sudden,
you're going to interject, okay, we got it now, a
machine gun, a fifty cow, a machine gun similar to
(03:51):
a fifty cow firing bullets, and it's just like, let's
mow it down in no man's land, and so massive,
massive destruction. You get like huge amounts of deaths in
six hours, and like the Soul, it's like seventy five
thousand men dying in a day. And I'm not being facetious,
(04:13):
and I have complete respect for the families and people
that lost their lives on nine to eleven, but you
cannot comprehend how much massacre has occurred in like a
war like World War One, and when you do comprehend it,
when you do see when you start to speak to veterans,
(04:35):
when say, you know and how horrible experiences can be
of someone right next to them losing their limbs or
losing an arm and an eyeball and blood's gushing out
all of a sudden. It's like it's not a movie.
It's actual freaking reality. And then you go home and
(04:57):
you got to like live with this. When you're back
home home as a civilian, it's like, that's okay. This
is like horror story beyond anything that you could comprehend.
It's like I learned that when you think you're at
the bottom of the basement, there are five more levels
that you can fall through. It began in a studio
(05:24):
in the South Bronx, and I began using real soldiers
that had seen combat because I needed to become just
aware and be able to depict things that would actually
tell how horrible it is when someone is sent into
a hell and expected to perform. And one of the
(05:46):
people that I hired and worked with on this project
was Ricky's Umbrano. Ricky's Mbrano was a marine. He went
to Afghanistan and he came back completely jacked up, shell shocked,
and that was called PTSD today. And he went to
the VA and they gave him fifteen different pills and
(06:08):
he felt like a zombie. He stopped taking the pills
and then shortly thereafter, one night he decided he couldn't,
he couldn't just go on, and he decided to take
a lot of these pills. And he's lying in his
bed and then his voice inside of him comes up
and goes, you get up, and it lifted him up
(06:30):
and he walked to the bathroom and force himself to
throw up. And from that moment on he realized that
nobody was coming to save him. He had to save himself.
And he learned how to deal without the pills by
(06:52):
exercising every day two to three hours very intensely. And
he worked for me for almost two years, and he
was the figure for the shell shocked soldier as well
as many of the other figures. He was full time
for me, and he was the body that we used
(07:12):
for the man carrying the flag as well, and the
soldier who is shell shocked. I used a ranger who
I heard stories from him of like he I saw
a scar on his shoulder and like, hey, Chris, how'd
you get that scar on your shoulder? And He's like,
we entered into a room and this Iraqi stabbed me
(07:35):
in a shoulder and I pulled the knife out and
I put it right into his throat and he didn't
walk out of that room. And Chris is the nicest
man that I've ever met. He has a huge heart.
And I think that there is a misunderstanding in our
society of what it takes to become part of the military.
How functional in some ways these soldiers are. They are
(07:58):
trained to enter into war, they are not trained to
re enter back into society. And so I have a friend, James,
who does very well as a building contractor, and he's
from the UK, and he asked me to be one
(08:19):
of the models. And I was very surprised, and I said, well, James,
I'd love to have you work with me. I don't
understand why, but you want to be a model. That's good.
He's came and posed a few times, and then I said,
I asked, hey, James, can you explain why you know what?
Why is this so important to you? Because he was
(08:40):
doing really well. He was bringing a lot of juice
to the photoshoots that we were doing, and I was
like a little puzzled, and he goes, well, okay, i'll
tell you after we finished work today. And so he
comes over and he goes, all right, So here's the story.
My great uncle and my great grandfather there were both
(09:00):
in World War One. My great grandfather did not return.
My great uncle did return, and when he came home,
he proceeded to shoot his wife with his service revolver,
shot his daughter, and then he shot himself. And I
grew up in that home, and so it obviously had
(09:21):
a huge impact on him and the ghosts that lived
in his past, and that experience taught me what this
war and all wars are about. I really gave it
my all to show them, in everything that they have
(09:44):
gone through and all their humanity, in a way that
is heroic, that speaks well of them, because this is
what they deserve. And the reason I'm harping on this
is because I don't think there is anything more noble
than to get of ones all physically and mentally to
one's country and then come back and not be thanked.
(10:08):
So the biggest element that this sculpture does is show
the transformation of war historically in World War One, and
it is identifiable for any conflict that has happened since then.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
And a terrific job on the production and editing by
our own Monta Montgomery. And you've been listening to Sabin
Howard who created the National World War One Memorial. It'll
be unveiled in Pershing Park and Washington, DC this September.
Go to Sabanhoward dot com to learn more, figure out
how you can support the great cause and great work
(10:44):
he's doing that will move you and we'll move your
family
Host
Lee Habeeb
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