Photograph by Jeff Kearns
Dr. John Stevenson, a surgeon at Kaiser Permanente in Santa Clara, examines Christine the monkey for Kenly Bicht, 7, at the West Valley Presbyterian Church Teddy Bear Fair May 11.
Stuffed friends get special care at Teddy Bear Fair
By Scott Steinberg
West Valley Presbyterian Church in Cupertino had its fifth Teddy Bear Fair on May 11. Accredited doctors and nurses were there to give medical care to stuffed animals.
Scoff not, said Sally Lantz, chairwoman of the West Valley Outreach Committee.
"This is something the community needs, and it's obvious by the response," she explains. "We have 300 to 400 people attend each year."
Children queued up with their ailing stuffed animals as the medical staff (in scrubs) worked diligently on problems both internal and external.
Dotty the iguana was laid out in front of Dr. Anne Moore, a retired physiatrist at O'Connor Hospital in San Jose. Dotty had been put in the washing machine. The end result? She was losing half her tail.
Moore chose to perform a dicey operation on the iguana--an anastomosis, or an end-to-end reattachment of the tail. After seemingly endless stitching and stuffing, Dotty survived what could be best described as miracle technique on the part of Moore.
"It's fun to be here," Moore said. "Sure, I could be out gardening."
Operating on the stuffed animals reminded her of medical school, when the instructors had the students practice surgical technique with their hands confined to the insides of an ice cream carton.
Dr. John Stevenson of Kaiser Permanente in San Jose said that "nothing can prepare him" for some of the cases he sees at the Teddy Bear Fair.
"Last year we saw a 5-foot tall bear with a three-quarters decapitation," he said. "We needed 11 units of blood," he added as he held two parts of a patient Saturday--the bear and the bear's left arm.
This year the injuries stayed more on the mundane side of things. Stevenson sewed an ear back on. Moore saw a pig with a heart murmur and a horse with gum on its foot and an earache.
And Stephen Abeshima, 7, of San Jose waited in line for a checkup on his bear, Teddy, who had eaten a diseased colony of ants.
In addition to the medical tent, the fair featured a bear museum, a "dress your bear" contest, live music, a dunking booth, face painting, arts and crafts, an "adopt a bear" booth and the balloon-tying-extraordinaire, Bouncy the Clown.
Pastor Ron McHattie was not abashed by the frivolous day.
"An event like this breaks down stereotypes," he said. "It shows the church is a safe place. You can have fun at church. When Roy Hovey first came to me with this idea, I thought he had gone crazy. I didn't know how it could be sold. I didn't know how to say to him, 'You may have lost your mind.'
"Here's a well-respected, elderly member of the congregation. No one could say no," McHattie added. "I hadn't done anything this bizarre in 25 years when I was doing youth ministry."
Roy Hovey is an energetic man in his 80s. He says he was visiting his daughter's church, First Presbyterian in Honolulu, when they were hosting a teddy bear fair. He was convinced the idea would carry well in Cupertino.
"There were a lot of skeptics," he said. "People thought I was crazy. The idea was to bring people onto our campus, to show them what a bunch of fun-loving Christians we can be."
Cupertino, California Since 1947
