Anthony Soraci was just 29 years old when he inched out into a scaffolding cross beam to plant a kiss on the head of the Statue of Liberty during a massive 1984 restoration project, posing for a photo so instantly iconic it earned him two separate shout-outs from Ronald Reagan.
“I’d been in the trades since I was 15. I started out doing roofing, then went into siding. I did everything. Then I got hooked up with the unions because of my experience and because I wasn’t afraid of heights, and the next thing I know I’m on the Statue of Liberty,” he told The Post.
He said the epic snapshot came about when a photographer on the jobsite egged him on as they were rigging the scaffolding at the start of the project.
Although the telescoping metal pole he’s standing on in the photo appears precarious, Soraci, now 71, says he wasn’t scared.
“Remember, we started from the ground up. There’s a big difference if you’re looking from the ground up saying ‘wow, that’s high.’ You get used to it going up there every day, but you couldn’t be afraid of heights I’ll tell you that,” he said.
“I remember you had to bring your lunch up there, because there was no way you were getting it from down below.”
As for him leaning in to kiss the famous statue without wearing a harness some 265 feet above the ground, Soraci said that was more a function of the job’s technical specifications than to burnish his daredevil credentials.
“You couldn’t wear a harness because we were spiking scaffolding on the way up. If you wore a harness you couldn’t build it, we were going around that statue multiple times a day.”
Soraci said his role as shop steward on the four-year project was to ensure everybody’s safety.
“I didn’t want anybody up there who didn’t know what they were doing. One slip and it was over, you weren’t coming back from that fall,” he said.
The famous photo instantly landed Soarci in the history books.
Then-president Reagan invoked the moment as he hailed America’s 210th birthday in the summer of 1986, celebrating the statue’s centennial after it was erected on Liberty Island.
“Many of us have seen the picture of another worker here, a tool belt around his waist, balanced on a narrow metal rod of scaffolding, leaning over to place a kiss on the forehead of Miss Liberty,” Reagan said as he kicked off his speech.
“Tony Soraci, the grandson of immigrant Italians, said it was something he was proud to do, ‘Something to tell my grandchildren,’” the former president said.
Soraci said although his immigrant grandparents weren’t alive to see the photo, he knows they would have been proud.
“I’m sure they’re still proud where they are, watching down. I’m sure of it.”
He called the unexpected fervor over the picture “fantastic,” and said it was an honor being a part of restoring one of America’s most recognizable landmarks.
“It was very historical working up there, it was patriotic. I loved it. I love doing work like that, I always did, but especially on the Statue of Liberty. That was a special project, it was really beautiful, I’ve seen things people will never see on that statue,” he recalled.
He said he remembered being struck by having an up-close and personal view of a detail in Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi’s master work that few get to see from that vantage: the broken shackle and chains peering out from beneath her draperies.
“I remember looking down at the chains, you really don’t see that when you’re looking from the ground-up. Seeing them up close was amazing.”
One workday he remembered a parade was taking place on Liberty Island, and that the marchers looked “like ants” from his view high up on the scaffolding.
Asked what Lady Liberty would think from her vantage point as America heads toward its 250th birthday, Soraci joked, “I’m sure she’d be thanking me for getting her all back together, her new torch all shined up.”
Although comfortably into retirement age, Soraci says he has no plans on slowing down anytime soon, and still spends his days climbing roofs and ladders in the baking-hot Texas sun for his contracting business U Need Gutters & More.
“I’ll never stop. I enjoy working, I love it.”
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