Timeline: Bob Cassilly

Cassilly graduates from St. John Vianney High School in Kirkwood.

At a competition sponsored by the St. Louis Artists' Guild, Cassilly wins the Stephen Kessler Memorial Prize, and $250, for an untitled sculpture of a standing woman carved in walnut.

Cassilly becomes the first man to graduate from Fontbonne University (then Fontbonne College), which previously had been a school for women.

While on honeymoon in Rome, Cassilly rushes at and punches a man who was smashing Michelangelo's "Pieta" with a hammer. Security guards spirit the vandal away from the angry crowd at St. Peter's Basilica.

Cassilly moves to Hawaii after selling Park Place, a restaurant he owned in Lafayette Square. He lives by the ocean and makes wood carvings but gets bored after a year and returns to St. Louis.

Cassilly starts a business, Cast Stone, which specializes in building architectural ornaments from inexpensive materials, such as fiberglass and polyurethane foam.

Work finishes on six new town houses in the 1500 block of Mississippi Avenue, all with Victorian facades designed by Cassilly. The buildings are the first three-story homes to be built in Lafayette Square since the turn of the century.

The St. Louis Zoo installs a sculpture by Cassilly of Marlin Perkins cradling a baby lion.

Workers install a 45-foot-long model of a squid in the St. Louis Zoo's Living World building. Cassilly sculpted the 600-pound squid. Other Cassilly works, including a 28-foot great white shark, would later join the display.

Crowds flock to the opening of Turtle Park, at Oakland and Tamm avenues. The park boasts seven concrete turtles, ranging in size from 7 to 40 feet long, and a giant python formed by Cassilly.

Cassilly opens City Museum in an old shoe factory on North 15th Street.

Some preservationists are aghast after Cassilly sculpts human figures from a crumbling portion of the World's Fair Wall, a barrier that faces Forest Park Parkway between Des Peres Avenue and Union Boulevard. A nearby homeowner had given Cassilly permission, but the artist didn't seek approval from the city or the residents' association that owned the wall.

Cassilly spray paints the words "Help" and "We've been slimed" on the shells of Turtle Park sculptures because he was upset the city had applied a thick coat of epoxy to the sculptures. When asked about the incident, Cassilly says. "I take the Fifth."

Cassilly divorces wife Gail, who co-founded City Museum and ran its day-to-day operations. About that time, Cassilly quits the museum but continues to act as landlord. Saddled with debt, the museum's board ultimately sells the place to Cassilly, who turns it into a for-profit institution.

Cassilly announces his plans for "Cementland," an attraction on 53 acres surrounding a defunct cement plant.

The World Aquarium, a 13,500-square-foot exhibit, opens on the second floor of City Museum.

Cassilly marries Melissa Giovanna "Gigi" Zompa, an oil painter and designer whom he had hired to paint the museum's concrete columns.

City Museum opens rooftop attractions, including fountains, a splash pool, slides, a Ferris wheel and a school bus.

Cassilly is found dead on a bulldozer at Cementland.