Traveling display promotes the Ten Commandments

By Jennifer Moody
Albany Democrat-Herald

Uncle Sam wants you — to remember the Ten Commandments.

His name is really Roy McFaddin, 58, of Monmouth. But when he puts on the Stars and Stripes, he’s Uncle Sam. And when he stands next to his display, which bears an 8-foot depiction of the commandments, he wants you to know he believes in their power.

“We need to remember that this is the foundation of our country,” McFaddin said Friday from his post outside Santiam Liquor on Pacific Boulevard in Albany. “We need to celebrate it. We shouldn’t hide it.”

McFaddin spent most of Friday outside the store at the urging of the owner, his friend Darrel Morgan. He offered free photographs with Uncle Sam and the Ten Commandments, handed out cards for his engraving business and visited with passersby.

C.J. Mihalko and his wife, Mary, stopped to look with their infant daughter. The couple had their picture taken and praised McFaddin’s effort.

“I’m in favor! Give God the glory,” Mary said. “We’re not a perfect country, but he’s had his hand in the foundation.”

An engraver by trade, McFaddin once carved the entire first chapter of the Biblical book of James on a slab of cultured marble for display at his home church, Calvary Chapel of Monmouth Independence. Next, his pastor suggested McFaddin engrave a copy of the Ten Commandments.

So he did: a 45-inch-square replica that he made of a high-density urethane known as SignFoam. Fellow parishioner Morgan liked it so much he commissioned his own copy, which now hangs above the cash register inside the liquor store.

McFaddin has since made another 45-inch copy, which he sold to a business in Salem, and stands ready to do more. He engraves the material, then roughs it up, breaks it, and puts it back together for the weathered, ancient look most patrons seem to favor. Each copy is hand-created, and no two are alike.

McFaddin took his giant billboard display to the Fourth of July parade in Monmouth and dressed as Uncle Sam for the occasion. Morgan was so impressed he bought McFaddin an even better Uncle Sam outfit to keep for future presentations.

McFaddin wore it to the Oregon State Fair and set up shop with the state’s Republican Party. There, he said, he drew his first, and so far only, negative comment.

“One person from the Democrats’ booth said, ‘Separation of church and state!’” he recalled with a chuckle. “We didn’t argue. We just said, ‘Thank you for your input.’”