Somber notes sounded through the tent on the Oregon Zoo’s North Meadow Terrace as members of the Royal Rosarians of Portland slowly approached the stage and, one-by-one, placed roses in a vase.
On a cold gray Saturday morning, hundreds gathered to remember a pillar of the community who was roughly the size of an actual pillar, Packy the elephant, who was euthanized Feb. 9 after a long bout with tuberculosis.
“I remember when he was born. It was momentous,” said Alice Avolio, who voted on Packy’s name as a schoolgirl and choked back tears as she remembered the old bull. “He was just so little, but it was a huge moment for the city.”
She recalled waiting in line at the old elephant barn as an 8-year-old to see Packy when he was just a wee 250-pound calf. Her sentiment was not uncommon among the crowd at the celebration of his life, which included the young, the old and everything in between.
“I’m just one of a long line of very lucky people who got to work with Packy and got to have a special relationship with him,” Bob Lee, the zoo’s elephant curator, told the crowd in the packed tent.
“Packy started it all,” said Lee, who worked with Packy for nearly 20 years.
That start came on April 14, 1962. At that point, an elephant hadn’t been born in captivity for 44 years and zookeepers didn’t know exactly what to expect. They knew so little, in fact, that they misjudged his gestation period by several months and created a media blitz when his mom, Belle, went into false labor in January.
Packy was born healthy a few months later and captivated the imagination of the city, and the world, upon taking his first steps. Lengthy magazine profiles were dedicated to him, songs were written in his honor, and he was proposed as the grand marshal of more than one parade.
His birthdays drew thousands to the zoo, his face came to grace the sides of buildings as murals went up in Portland, and the zoo now uses his likeness as their official logo.
As with any animal in captivity, though, Packy’s life was not without controversy. Groups sprouted up calling for him, along with the rest of the zoo’s herd, to be moved to a sanctuary. Courtney Scott, president of Free the Oregon Zoo Elephants, stood outside the zoo Saturday morning calling attention to what she sees as the plight of Packy and the rest of the zoo’s pachyderms.
“Packy was born into captivity and he died in captivity,” she said. “He was never given the chance to live life as an elephant.”
She pointed to his drug-resistant form of tuberculosis as an example of what she called his “physical and psychological suffering.” He was first diagnosed with the disease in 2013 and had been quarantined away from the rest of the herd since at least late 2015.
She also raised questions about the timing of his death, noting that he wasn’t showing any symptoms when the zoo put him down, concerns that were echoed even by some of his keepers inside the zoo.
Still, Saturday’s event was focused on Packy’s legacy. The length of gestation in Asian elephants was just the first lesson he taught the world. Lee noted that the zoo’s elephant habitat was looked to by zookeepers all over the world as a pinnacle of what could be done with captive animals, much of which was designed with Packy in mind.
Now “professionals from around the world come to this zoo and they see Elephant Lands and they use what we built here, based on that work with Packy and the entire herd, to improve their habitats for their animals,” Lee said. “His legacy continues to grow.”
And even in death, Packy continued teaching lessons. Dan Slightam, a 39-year-old Portland resident, brought his two young daughters — Evelina, 6, and Lorelei, 3 — to the memorial. Evelina has a special place in her heart for Packy, and a stuffed animal at home who bears his name, but Slightam brought his daughters for another reason: He saw it as a gentle way to introduce his young ones to the idea of mortality.
“It was a rare opportunity to introduce them to the concept of death in this kind of setting,” he said. “It was a very tasteful ceremony.”
Asked if she missed Packy, Evelina looked up from a piece of cake she was enjoying and bashfully nodded.
— Kale Williams
kwilliams@oregonian.com
503-294-4048
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