Whipped for decades by wind, car exhaust and the occasional stray bullet, the statue of a beloved Birmingham teacher is slowly returning to its former luster.

In Linn Park, right across Park Place from the Birmingham Board of Education, sculptor Dale Chambliss has been restoring the statue of Mary Ann Cahalan, who taught Birmingham's first generation of students at Powell School from 1874 until 1906, when she died suddenly.

City leaders, many of them former students, immediately raised sums for a memorial. In 1907, famed Italian artist Giuseppe Moretti carved Cahalan's likeness from Talladega marble, and a year later delivered the 11-foot sculpture to a grateful public, who inscribed upon it "Erected By The People of Birmingham."

Then, as her intimates and former students died over the years, most folks pretty much forgot about it.

A finger on the statue is broken and part of the nose is missing. Emergency surgery unknown years ago pinned a shoulder in place. The piece shows no evidence of having been sealed in recent years, so water seeps in, freezes and weakens the marble. There are three bullet holes and only a series of chemical baths has removed decades of soot, grime, tree sap and other yuck.

Rarely noticed treasure:

Not that a lot of folks paid attention anyway. Almost nobody notices Cahalan, tucked away between two paved paths that lead to the Jefferson County Courthouse, neither of which affords a bird's-eye view of her, coming or going.

"It's true," said Chambliss, the man now entrusted with repairing the work. "Most people have probably never even noticed her."

They are really missing out. Moretti, who forged the Vulcan statue atop Red Mountain and left a breathtaking body of work throughout Alabama, captured a still youthful Cahalan, seated and holding a book. He froze in time a facial expression that Cahalan's students probably knew well: Her gaze shows both obvious affection and the absolute conviction that she knows what is best.

"Mary Ann Cahalan became the most beloved and best-remembered teacher at Powell and for 30 years instilled the principles of honor and patriotism to the youth of the city," wrote Leah Rawls Atkins in "The Valley and The Hills," an illustrated history of Birmingham.

The non-profit group Friends of Linn Park came to the statue's rescue by hiring Chambliss, who is on his 23rd restoration of stone pieces in marble or granite. After the chemical clean-up, the intricate folds in Cahalan's dress again seem to ripple and drape, and the rosettes that decorate her frock at the neckline have emerged from decades of grime-induced hibernation.

Chambliss has some serious surgery to do as well. Last week, he was perched atop the statue, making a clay model of a section of Cahalan's nose. He will then carve an identical one out of marble, and use cement, a drill and a steel pin to replace the missing section of proboscis. He's been at work for a couple of weeks and said he figures he has at least another to go.

Pastor turned sculptor:

The sculptor, who has a Ph.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, is a remarkable story in his own right. Chambliss, 52, quit a 20-year career as a Baptist clergyman to study art in Carrara, Italy, where he fell in love with marble and sculpture. His last job was as senior pastor at Southside Baptist, a 1,000-strong congregation with a budget in the millions and the payroll of a medium-sized business.

"It was a post-midlife change of direction," laughed Chambliss, who remains a frequent visitor at Southside Baptist. "I just wanted to explore something new."

It's worked well. Aside from his own art and repair work on other sculptures, Chambliss has a thriving business making decorative fireplaces and heirloom-quality countertops.

Cahalan came to Birmingham from Georgia with Irish parents. Her file at the Linn-Henley Library includes notes that the first Catholic Masses in Jefferson County were held in the family home. She died after a brief struggle with kidney failure at age 51 while serving as principal of Powell, Birmingham's first public school.

Pallbearers included the mayor and school superintendent, both former students. The Birmingham Age-Herald reported that her funeral, a solemn high requiem Mass at St. Paul's Cathedral, was "one of the most impressive and well-attended" in city history.

Now, a century later, Chambliss' work is almost done.

"She should be good for at least another hundred," he said.