Some people yearn for world peace.
Dave Burkett longs for Archie the Snowman.
Burkett and friend Tom Uplinger have launched an Internet campaign to revive the 22-foot-tall icon that once was the center of holiday attention at Chapel Hill Mall.
They have amassed a cadre of volunteers promising money and sweat equity and are pushing ahead to find a new home for the fixture.
“We’re going to start a website next week, sell decals and T-shirts and give live updates on what’s going on,” said an enthusiastic Burkett, 34. “It’s not going to cost a million dollars to rebuild Archie. It’ll cost $2,000, $3,000 tops.”
For two weeks Burkett and Uplinger have been pestering the local mall and its owners in Chattanooga, Tenn., about the whereabouts of Archie, who was dismantled after the 2003 holiday season and never seen in public again.
Spokeswoman Sandra Heymann for mall owner CBL and Associates has been circumspect about what happened to the goofy icon, whose top hat brushed the mall ceiling.
When her company bought the mall in 2003, it found him to be in, well, abominable condition, she said.
“It’s a reality that all decorations share,” she said. “They outlive their safe usefulness.”
The snowman was a fixture for 35 years at the North Akron mall. Mall employees in a nearby booth with one-way tinted glass made Archie blink his eyes and speak via a microphone to as many as 30,000 awed children each season.
He was one big snowman, occupying 20 to 40 square feet of valuable mall geography, the centerpiece of a winter scene that also included penguins, Eskimos and smaller snowmen.
Poor condition disputed
After the 2003 season, he was mothballed for a while, recalled Andy Sherbine of Green, who was a maintenance man for the mall at the time and now works for the Akron Beacon Journal.
Sherbine maintains Archie was in good shape even at the end.
“I put him up for 14 years and helped rebuild him in 2002,” he said.
Archie came to an inglorious end in 2005, said Sherbine, who by then had moved to another job. A friend still employed at the mall relayed the sad news: The snowman had been smashed, deposited in a trash container and hauled to a landfill.
Sherbine was disappointed. “Heck, I wanted him,” he said. “I wanted to put him up at my own house.”
Friends Burkett and Uplinger, 39, accept that there’s no way to salvage the original Archie, but they believe they can re-create his magic.
Not only was his skeleton pretty modest — plywood and chicken wire topped with cotton fiber – but they already have 7,200 fans, many pledging to help, on their Bring Archie the Snowman Back fan page on Facebook.
What about Lock 3?
They’re plowing ahead with more plans: In addition to the Archie website, they are approaching the city of Akron about a location for the squat gentleman — ideally Lock 3, home to ice-skating and other festivities in downtown Akron.
Given the vibrant public response to their campaign, the Akronites think they may be able to get Archie up in time for Christmas. That means that they would be able to bring their young children to see him, just like their own parents took them to Chapel Hill Mall.
CBL spokeswoman Heymann seems to agree that’s the right route to take.
“If it’s truly about a memory, let it be a glorious memory and let’s build new ones,” she said. “Build a new Archie. Our Archie has retired.”
Carol Biliczky can be reached at 330-996-3729 or cbiliczky@thebeaconjournal.com.