Posted on 08/09/2022 3:43:07 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Smokey Bear turns 78 and you can join in on a celebration happening Tuesday.
From 3 to 4 p.m. Tuesday, a virtual birthday party will be held for Smokey on a live stream. The party will be hosted by PBS host Darley Newman and representatives from the U.S. Forest Service.
Smokey was born Aug. 9, 1944, as a campaign to prevent forest fires but the real Smokey came to be six years later.
In the spring of 1950, a young bear cub was found alive after being caught and badly burned while taking shelter up in a tree in a burning forest within New Mexico’s Capitan Mountains. The firefighters later named him Smokey.
Smokey lived at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., until his death in 1976. After his death, he was returned to the Capitans and was buried. He is also celebrating his 70th birthday this week.
When I was a child I was a big Smokey fan. I would get excited every time I saw a Smokey sign along the road during family vacations. One day my older brother told me a story about Ruff the Bear. Seems Ruff was Smokey’s older brother who during the fire pushed Smokey up the tree so that Smokey lived but unfortunately, for Ruff, not so much. He tells me now how I cried when he told the story. I think he even sent the story somewhere for publication but was (obviously) rejected. Anyway, at 64, I still get excited about seeing Smokey the Bear signs and wonder if there really was a Ruff the Bear.
Pretty funny.
We’ve been cramming in “Emergency!” Shows from the ‘70s and particularly the other day, I was noting how they had Smokey all over the place, esp. in an episode where they are stuck in the “boonies” with an Outland fire station.
i actually have a picture of him around here someplace i took in 1964 at the zoo...
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Throw in a human beat-box and a few M-Fs and it would be brought up to date.
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