“The bottom part is an ode to what he did,” said Heshnel. “I thought it was magnanimous of Uther, when I first saw it. Vervain was his mentor, first and foremost, and that would be what history would remember him as. Yet the list of accomplishments omitted any mention of Uther or the others, focusing solely on what Vervain himself had done. When I found out what had happened to Vervain, it took on a darker tone, because perhaps Uther was trying to drive some distance between them after the fact, not admitting that Vervain had made Uther into what he became. And yet the epigraph is overshadowed by four letters, set on the plinth as large as all of Vervain’s accomplishments. D-M-P-C.”