STURGIS, S.D. -- A funeral will be held Sunday for Korczak Ziolkowski, who spent 35 years -- nearly half his life -- blasting millions of tons of granite to create a mountain-sized monument to Sioux Indian chief Crazy Horse.
Ziolkowski died Wednesday of heart disease at age 74.
In more than three decades of work, only a rough outline of the figure of Crazy Horse upon a horse was completed. Ziolkowski had estimated years of work remained.
The Boston-born Pole in 1947 started blasting Thunderhead Mountain to create the 563-foot by 641-foot statue of Crazy Horse, who defeated Gen. George Armstrong Custer in the infamous battle of Little Big Horn.
'Everybody says I'm nuts,' said Ziolkowski in an interview a few years after the project had begun. 'Hell, you've got to be nuts to do a thing like this.'
His work often was compared to Gutzon Borglum, who carved Mount Rushmore, the monumental sculpture of four U.S. presidents located 16 miles north of the Crazy Horse project in the Black Hills.
When completed, the horse's eye was to be 18-feet wide and 16-feet high; the head 22 stories high.
Family spokesman Robb DeWall said the project 'definitely will continue.'
'Ziolkowski's whole life would be wasted if the project stopped after his 35 years of labor and all the momentum he has given it,' said DeWall.
Ziolkowski underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery last summer in a Hartford, Conn., hospital.
At the time, he said he was beginning to feel his physical limitations, after four back operations and removal of six discs.
'I hope I can have a few more years to leave it fully roughed out with maybe enough time to begin some of the finish work before I have to leave it for my family and the Crazy Horse National Commission to complete,' he said.
The project never received public funding, but Ziolkowski raised more than $4 million on his own.
Ziolkowski's wife Ruth and nine of their 10 children were with him when he died in a Sturgis hospital, de Wall said.
Gov. Bill Janklow said Ziolowski's death was 'a tragic loss for South Dakota and the world.'
His funeral will be at the uncompleted monument Sunday at 1:30 p.m. CDT.
