To commemorate the holiday of Penguin Awareness Day on Friday, January 20th, 2017, it seemed fitting to place this cache here.
I moved to Silver Spring about a year ago, so I am still getting up to speed on the local history, but I was always wondering about the penguin statue here. Some online research has helped tell how penguins have been associated with the community of Silver Spring.
It turns out that the Silver Spring tradition around penguins started in 1989, when Sally Callmer Thompson won a design competition to develop a mural for the Silver Spring Red Line Station. Her entry, "Penguin Rush Hour," was a mural of various penguin species interacting and performing everyday commuting tasks, such as buying Farecards, reading newspapers, and running after buses. Working with exterior latex paint, Sally applied the mural to 25 8'x4' plywood panels, as the work was only meant to be up for a year, but the public loved it and it remained.
After being exposed to the elements, the mural started to decay, fade, and flake, so, in 2004, a fundraising campaign, “Pennies for Penguins” raised the money for restoration.
UPDATE: As of March 29, 2017, the mural has been restored!
Its legacy also lives on in little reminders, such as the penguin theme at the ice rink at Veteran’s Plaza, a penguin balloon in the local Thanksgiving parade, a penguin named Pepe hanging around the Silver Spring Library, and the Regional Services’ having used a penguin named Monty as a marketing tool. This statue must also be related to the “Penguin Fever” that had swept the town.
The cache is a micro, so BYOP. There may be high muggle traffic at times, so use stealth while searching.
Resources:
https://silverspringblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/silver-springs-serious-case-of-penguin-fever/
http://www.gazette.net/stories/121306/silvnew173946_31980.shtml
http://www.mymcmedia.org/uncovering-the-silver-spring-penguin-mural-video/
http://www.bethesdamagazine.com/Bethesda-Beat/2017/New-Silver-Spring-Penguin-Mural-To-Be-Unveiled-March-29/
*****Congratulations to shields1291 & bosoxfansinnewjersey for Co-FTF!!!!*****