ROANOKE - The future statue of Henrietta Lacks will depict the historical figure from Roanoke standing with arms folded in a blazer, long skirt and heeled shoes, according to a recently released drawing.

The drawing was undraped in a brief ceremony Dec. 19, giving residents a first look at the concept for the planned statue to be permanently installed across from the city municipal building in fall 2023. About 100 people attended.

Roanoke artist Bryce Cobbs had only two photos of Mrs. Lacks, who lived from 1920 until 1951, from which to draw her, the first phase of a project for which a fundraiser collected more than $160,000.

Blacksburg artist Larry Bechtel will begin the creation of the statue by crafting a 24-inch model in oil-based clay, guided by the drawing and recollections of Mrs. Lacks’ family, including her only living child, Lawrence Lacks.

“This means a lot to my family,” Ron Lacks, Lawrence’s son, said at the event.

The finished work, a hollow bronze figure weighing about 400 pounds, will stand six feet high — six inches taller than Mrs. Lacks’actual height, Mr. Bechtel said. Crews will mount her on a stone base beneath five crepe myrtles in Lacks Plaza.

The statue will replace a monument of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. City officials voted to remove the monument after its vandalization during the height of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. Trish White-Boyd, Roanoke’s vice mayor, and the Harrison Museum of African American Culture started fundraising for a public history project to replace the monument, according to a National Public Radio article.

The project grew out of a sense that Roanoke would be remiss to not honor Mrs. Lacks since this is her place of birth and where she spent the first few years of her life. Mrs. Lacks, who grew up on a tobacco farm in Clover, a part of Halifax County, is honored with signs, markers, statues and exhibits in various places of the United States and world.

She was the source of a living cell line used in globally important medical research. Known today as HeLa cells, they constitute the first known immortal line of human cells in history. However, the doctors involved, who were treating her for cervical cancer at the Johns Hop- kins Hospital in Baltimore, extracted and studied the tissue without her permission

shortly before her death. Members of her family say neither they nor her estate were compensated. A lawsuit is pending in federal court in Maryland on behalf of Mrs. Lacks’ estate, arguing that drug companies engaged in “unjust enrichment,” said Ben Crump, the plaintiff’s lawyer, who attended the event. Mr. Crump specializes in civil rights and catastrophic personal injury cases such as wrongful death lawsuits.

“It’s an unprecedented lawsuit because Henrietta Lacks was an unprecedented human being,” Mr. Crump said. “Pharmaceutical companies have made billions and billions and billions of dollars. The family hasn’t gotten one red penny.”