Worker in iconic photo kissing Statue of Liberty recalls death-defying perch: One slip and it was over

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 a...