The prayer garden is not the only project that Schild and Baston have worked on together. Erskine College in South Carolina has a park they designed and built with a circular walkway lined with commandment statues.

When a 10 commandments monument was forcibly removed by court order from the Alabama State Judicial Building in 2003 it made Dick Schild, a retired art director living in Lake Placid, so angry he commissioned his own 7,500-pound granite monument entitled “10 commandments under attack.”

That project became the first of several granite sculptures that now make up the gospel prayer garden at First Presbyterian Church (ARP) of Lake Placid.

Entering the garden you are struck by the beauty of each piece that was designed by Schild and created by Baston Monuments Inc. in Elberton, Ga.

Born 82 years ago in South Fort Mitchell, Ky., Schild attended the University of Kentucky, Georgetown College, and the Central Academy of Commercial Art in Cincinnati. He and Nancy, his wife of more than 50 years, have four children, all living in different areas of Florida.

Schild was an award winning art director working in Miami for the J.M. Mathes Advertising Agency, who also had offices in New York, Toronto, Montreal, and London. He and a friend later purchased the Miami office and renamed it Ryder and Schild. They did the advertising for a wide variety of businesses including boat manufacturers, travel industry clients, cruise lines, and sports products.

When he retired to Lake Placid 20 years ago he took up stain glass as a creative outlet and donated his labor to create pieces that now hang in Temple Israel of Highlands County and the office of the First Presbyterian Church.

In 2003 news of an ACLU lawsuit and the subsequent order by U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson to remove a 10 commandments monument from an Alabama judicial building left Schild feeling his religious principles were under attack. He proclaimed, “To heck with them, I’ll make my own!”