POP/ROCK - Jan. 11, 1988

On what would have been her 45th birthday, Janis Joplin will finally get official recognition from her home town of Port Arthur, Tex. On Jan. 19, a statue of the singer, who died Oct. 4, 1971, of a heroine overdose, will be unveiled at the Port Arthur Civic Center. In interviews, Joplin had often told of her bitterness at being treated as an outcast in Port Arthur, a rejection hauntingly portrayed by Bette Midler in “The Rose” (1979). “This statue is sort of a peace offering between Janis and the city,” said John Palmer, a local businessman and former schoolmate of the blues singer who commissioned the statue by sculptor Douglas Clark. Following the ceremony, the statue will be installed permanently at the city’s historical museum on the campus of Lamar University, where Joplin was a student and where her mother was registrar.