They are natives of Colombia who never met Joe Paterno and, until about 10 years ago, had never heard of Penn State University.

But the two Lancaster County cousins helped create the iconic statue of Paterno that has become a symbol and a shrine for the university's grief in the wake of the death of its famous football coach.

Yesid Gomez and Wilfer Buitrago helped produce the statue of Paterno in their Ephrata foundry and art studio, basing it on a sculpture by the artist Angelo DiMaria of Reading.

This week, you couldn't pick up a newspaper or turn on a television news broadcast without seeing the 7 1/2-foot-tall sculpture surrounded by hundreds of candles and flowers, draped in the American flag and Penn State garb, surrounded by hushed people who had come to pay their respects outside Beaver Stadium on the university's campus.

"A lot of people don't know that the Joe Paterno sculpture was born in Ephrata," Gomez said. "We are so proud every time we see it. It's so difficult to describe how that makes us feel. We feel unbelievable about what's happened."

Said Buitrago, "You make pieces and they end up in a gallery or some private collector will buy it. This is something that people have been able to look at. … People feel emotion about it. We feel the emotion."

The two cousins helped to produce the sculpture from an 18-inch model created by DiMaria in 2001. The $110,000, 900-pound sculpture was commissioned by the university and friends of Paterno and his wife, Sue.

DiMaria created the now-famous figure of Paterno in midstride, his index finger raised in a victory salute. Behind him, on a wall, are four football players.

Also in the middle section of the wall behind the statue is a quote from Paterno: "They ask me what I'd like written about me when I'm gone. I hope they write I made Penn State a better place, not just that I was a good football coach."

Gomez and Buitrago said they were not familiar with Paterno when they first started working on the yearlong project to produce the statue at their now-closed studio and foundry, which was on Pointview Avenue in Ephrata.

The two men, both freelance artists, came to Ephrata in the late 1980s, joining family members here, after studying art in Colombia and New York.

They opened their studio, Castello Dell Arte, in 1998 and produced other large-scale sculptures there, including a bear for Kutztown University and a large crucifix for a church in Annapolis, Md.

When they started working with DiMaria on the Paterno sculpture, they had to learn a little bit about its inspiration.

"My cousin and I, we don't even follow sports," Gomez said. "We found out that Joe Paterno was the coach for Penn State, and now we were Penn State fans.

"We started looking at the games; we got videos and pictures of him."

Buitrago said he wasn't sure at first that the pose of the statue was right — he had not seen Paterno running with his hand held in the air that way. But after the sculpture came out, he said he saw Paterno mimicking the pose and wondered if the statue inspired that.

The two cousins helped to make the clay model, create a rubber mold of it, do a wax casting, do the bronze casting and then apply the patina to it through a chemical process.

They did not install the statue themselves because the university had a crew to do that in November 2001, shortly after Paterno became the top Division I-A coach when he moved past Bear Bryant for the number of victories.

The cousins also did not get to meet Paterno. A lunch that was planned never materialized.

In fact, Gomez and Buitrago saw Paterno in person only once, from a distance, when he was on the football field during the 2001 homecoming game against Southern Miss shortly after the statue was erected. That visit also marked the only time the cousins saw the statue after it had been put in its place.

But in the years after that, they saw lots of photos of the sculpture and heard stories about it.

"People on graduation day would go and touch the hands of Joe Paterno for good luck," Gomez said. "It was a whole thing going on."

Fans sometimes kiss the statue's feet before football games and gather there for photos.

The cousins also got a call once to replace the statue's glasses, which pranksters had somehow removed. DiMaria oversaw the restoration of that.

The pair said they're saddened about the events that gave the statue its recent brush with fame.

In fact, they worried for a time that the statue might be taken down, after some news reports mentioned the possibility in the wake of Paterno's firing after the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.

"I was thinking, 'Forget about it!'" Gomez said. "I said to my cousin, 'Are they crazy? Are they going to take that down? We should contact Penn State, and we'll come and take the sculpture and put it in our backyard.' "

But since Paterno's death last weekend, the sculpture has become, like the coach, larger than life.

They hope it now helps Paterno's legacy live on for generations.

"Bronze is forever, " Gomez said. "We immortalized a legend. We're so proud that we did it as a team."

cstauffer@lnpnews.com