Portlanders Forgot About Packy

What do they teach them in these schools?

Packy (Sara Hottman, courtesy of the Oregon Zoo)
By Aaron Mesh and Zave Payne

Two months into our roving civics quiz, called Hot Mic, and we’re starting to have our doubts about the quality of an Oregon education. We didn’t really expect anybody to be able to name the governor, or the secretary of state. But we assumed even young Portlanders would know the name of Packy the elephant.

Nope.

If you need a refresher (and it seems some of you do), Packy was the first elephant born in the Western hemisphere in 44 years when Belle birthed him at the Portland Zoo, as it was then called, in 1962. He was an instant civic celebrity—and something of a wedge issue as animal rights activists repeatedly demanded his release into the wild. He stood 10 feet high, painted with his trunk, and loved smashing pumpkins. After his death from tuberculosis in 2017, an anti-tax campaign ran cheeky ads questioning the regional government’s competence with the slogan, “Packy: Never Forget.”

We forgot. These are shameful times.

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