We're torn over whether the Iowa City community should congratulate or should tar-and-feather local historian Timothy C. Parrott for so effectively demystifying the lingering legends surrounding the life of Theresa Feldwert and the statue she commissioned as a memorial to her third husband and her second son. Gone are the stories of the statue being hit by lightning, or falling off the boat on the way from Europe, or commemorating the death of Feldwert's infant son. Left is an account of how a bronze statue, made in a Chicago foundry, quickly turned black because of oxidation.

Indeed, in his recently published "The Enigma of Theresa Dolezal Feldwert and the Black Angel," Parrott coldly asserts that, "The infamous Black Angel is nothing more than an imposing albeit forbidding monument, memorializing the lives of Mrs. Feldwert, her third husband, and teenage son."

Although the short book will force Iowa City ghost storytellers to adjust the tales they share over midnight campfires, Parrott manages to tell a story even more interesting than the many spooky theories about how the statue lost some of its fingers. By digging in the archives of Iowa City's 19th-century Czech-language newspaper and of the public records throughout Czechoslovia, Parrott fleshes out the life of one of Iowa City's amazing female citizens: Theresa Karasek Dolezal Picha Feldwert (1836-1924).

The story of Theresa Feldwert -- engraved as "Feldevert" on the memorial stone -- is a story of a mother's heartbreak, of an immigrant's American dream, of love affairs, of a scandalous divorce, of multiple legal battles, of living with physical disability and of a woman's ambition to be remembered long after her death. She

• was born in the Czech village of Strmilov,

• married a doctor in 1866,

• lost her firstborn infant son,

• graduated from the University of Vienna's Clinic for Obstetrics,

• gave birth to a second son,

• traveled to America after her husband's death,

• proved successful enough as midwife in Iowa City to purchase several homes of increasing value,

• lost her second son on the verge of his adulthood,

• married and divorced her second husband,

• married Nicholas Feldwert,

• had her leg amputated because of a snake bite and

• used some of her share of Feldwert's estate to commission artist Josef Mario Korbel to construct the memorial now standing in Oakland Cemetery.

Parrott shows how, despite the various roles played during her life, Theresa Feldwert's most enduring role was that of survivor. Her life proves worthy of the time and effort Parrott spent pulling her records from the historical archive and translating the poetry that she wrote on paper and had etched in stone.

Despite the glee in which Parrott denounces supernatural legends surrounding the statue, "The Enigma" demonstrates Parrott's commitment to our community and to the accuracy of the stories it tells about itself. Parrott's grandfather, Charles F. "Polly" Parrott, cared for the Black Angel when he served as superintendent of Oakland Cemetery from 1947 to 1964. Now Parrott is keeping up the family tradition by caring for this well-known Iowa City landmark in his own way.