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Traveling on the interstates and state highways of Wisconsin, for some, is a big deal. The open road, it promises all the sights, sounds, and attractions you can take. For myself, going south means passing the Mousehouse Cheesehaus near Madison. Going west means passing the Jolly Green Giant on I-90. Going north means passing the world’s largest muskie in Hayward.

When my wife and I were looking at apartments near La Crosse, they were just statues, giant statues that symbolized travel. Until we saw something, a rabbit – a five-foot tall, fiberglass rabbit to be exact. Towering over a small garden, it looked at us as we talked to our future landlords, Jerome and Judy Vettrus.

We asked, “What’s with the rabbit?”

Jerome replied, “I made it.”

Fiberglass statues are a small part of American identity. Paul Bunyan, Mickey Mouse, Big Boy Burgers, or any waterslide in America has been casted in fiberglass. And Jerome has made many of them. A 15-foot tall pheasant, a Sinclair dinosaur you can walk through, or the Nails’ Tails statue outside Camp Randall Stadium, all him.

He never intended to be a sculptor. In fact, he went to college to be a high school business teacher. Life, as it turns out, never happens the way you expect it.

“It began by accident actually,” Jerome explains. “I went back [to college] to work on my Master’s degree in Business. In between that, in order to make a little money, I started to do some drawings, and then selling them at a local restaurant in Sparta, [WI].”

The owners of Creative Displays, a Sparta-based fiberglass sculpting company, liked Jerome’s work, enough to hire him on the spot. Unbeknown to him, Creative Displays would become a massive part of his life for the next 40 years.

Jerome came into the industry with a novice understanding of sculpting. He took his understanding to the next level in a big way. In the summer and fall of 1978, he designed world’s largest muskie, over 40-feet high and 150-feet long; we’re looking at something bigger than a Boeing 757. Even this project, as you could imagine, was a learning experience.

“That took nine months to build,” says Jerome. “One problem was, when I did the drawings, the drawings were correct. But when it was sculpted, Dave Oswald [who] did most of sculpting on it, he misinterpreted the inside dimensions to the outside of all the steel work we did. . . it was too tight to get on the steel structure. So we had to adjust it.”

After the muskie was completed, Jerome’s confidence grew. He started small, making a three-foot parrot and other odds and ends statues. Looking at his competition was easy in Wisconsin. For the dairy state, almost every town has a fiberglass cow. Getting up close, he changed the game in fiberglass.

“If you look at some of these big bulls, they don’t have a lot of fine detail,” explains Jerome. “We decided we would make molds and castings . . . so you really get the fine detail in lines and texture.”

These casts remained. Dubbed the “graveyard,” the moldings laid in an endless field outside Sparta. And with these casts in hand, they were able to increase production. Until 1983, when the owners sold the business and moved it to Florida, he started his own company and, in 1984, changed what people thought these statues could do.

“I went to a fiberglass convention in New Orleans,” says Jerome. After setting up a hulking Viking statue and getting positive feedback, one question perplexed him: “What does it do?” Driving back to Wisconsin, Jerome thought about a new angle for his developing company: Kiddie Delights, Slides and Swings, a line of functional statues.

He branded his company FAST or Fiberglass Animals, Shapes and Trademarks. As his skills grew, Jerome’s reputation grew as well. And for a while, it seemed like his work was going everywhere. Yet, outside of the world of fiberglass, he was just Jerome, the guy down the street who read the newspaper everyday at the library. For the most part, he prefers it this way.

“I really don’t get many of those conversations [about my work]. It’s kinda funny,” says Jerome. “My little granddaughters, we go down to Riverside Park. And they’ll say ‘Grandpa, did you make that big Indian down there?’ No, that’s made out of cement.”

But, he still had admirers. It goes to show, if you see a great piece of craftsmanship, you need to comment on it.

“We’re headed down the highway [towing a gorilla statue]. And the state police pull us over,” recalls Jerome. “He comes walking up and I say ‘Now what’s wrong?'”

“There’s nothing wrong” replied the state trooper. “I just wanted to be able to see this thing.”

Much like Jerome’s life, it’s these types of unexpected experiences that can turn into something great. What Jerome leaves behind is something more than roadside attractions. It’s how you use these unexpected experiences and turn them it something more. Even his rabbit served a greater purpose in the end.

“[The rabbit] was something that we had in [my] inventory,” remembers Jerome. “It was something that was not too large that I thought would go well in the garden over there. It was kinda on a whim. And I said ‘Why don’t you take that rabbit’ to Jude and that was before we were married.”

“Did you use that to win her over?” I ask.

“Maybe that could have been part of it!” Jerome laughs.