Submitted photo Village Trustee Roger Britz, left, talks with sculptor William Koch about the cherub.

Fredonia, we have a cherub.

A couple of trouble-makers swiped the cherub from atop one of the Barker Common fountains back in 2019. That wrong is about to get righted, with the installation of a replacement coming soon.

Village Trustee Roger Britz has been overseeing the effort to sculpt a new cherub for the top of the fountain in the west side of Barker Common.

“If all goes as planned, the cherub will be installed Oct. 30 or 31, just as the end of the park project will be completed,” said Britz.

Buffalo sculptor William Koch created the new cherub. Britz said Koch was recommended to village trustees by Robert Booth, a retired SUNY Fredonia professor who oversaw restoration efforts on the fountains in the 1990s.

“The cherub was sculpted from photos from collections Bob Booth and myself had,” Britz said.

Insurance covered $10,000 of the cost of the sculpture and trustees approved paying for the balance from the budget’s general fund, Britz said. He was not sure of the total cost, stating he would need to find the resolution that approved the expenditure.

The project is highly personal for Britz because a member of his family donated the original fountains back in 1900.

Charles Mark, whose name can still be seen on the fountains, was the brother of Britz’s great-grandmother, Harriet Ann Mark.

He advocates security measures in and around the commons to deter people from messing with the fountains. “The village is looking into webcams that can be installed on the new park lighting poles to provide better security around the park and store fronts that face the park,” he said.

The original cherub was stolen in November 2019 at about 2:20 a.m. on a Thursday morning. Police reviewed footage from a camera in the park and determined two people removed the sculpture from atop the fountain, entering from the west side of the park and fleeing the same way. No one was ever charged for the theft and it remains unsolved.

A look through OBSERVER archives shows that the cherub has had a rocky history, even before it was stolen in 2019.

The cherub was also vandalized in October 1997, but that time, it was recovered by village police a couple months later — minus its head. A couple of SUNY Fredonia students tipped off authorities as to where the sculpture could be found, and police took it back after getting a search warrant.

Booth repaired it back then. He was the one who noticed the cherub was missing in 2019, reporting it to police. He also worked on the fountain after more vandalism in 1990.

The version of the cherub that got beat up back in the ’90s was possibly a replacement, itself. The original sculpture got smashed by a falling tree in November 1967.