• SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- South Dakota philanthropist T. Denny Sanford has pledged a $10 million matching gift to accelerate work on the mammoth Crazy Horse Memorial mountain carving in South Dakota's Black Hills, the memorial announced Thursday.
• Sanford's gift follows a $10 million matching pledge he made in 2007 that drew a $5 million donation from Paul and Donna "Muffy" Christen of Huron and helped raise another $5 million in donations for the ongoing project.
• Ruth Ziolkowski, the memorial's president and chief executive, said Sanford's first gift has helped speed progress on the rough shaping of the Oglala Lakota leader's horse head through better carving equipment and detailed engineering studies of the rock.
• "It's made all the difference in the world," said Ziolkowski, the widow of sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski.
• Inspired by Gutzon Borglum's nearby Mount Rushmore carving, Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear proposed a memorial to Native American heroes with a granite carving near Custer. Crazy Horse played a key role in the 1876 defeat of the U.S. 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana. He died a year later after being stabbed in Nebraska.
• When completed, the carving of his image on a bluff about 10 miles southwest of Mount Rushmore will be 641 feet long and 563 feet high. The horse's head will be the memorial's largest artistic detail at 219 feet high.
• Korczak Ziolkowski was the longtime leader of the project and his widow and children have followed his admonition to rely only on private enterprise.
• Sanford, a former Sioux Falls businessman and banker who made much of his fortune in the credit card industry, said his gifts stem from a deep admiration he has for what the Ziolkowskis have accomplished through determination and persever

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