{"id":992,"date":"2017-06-07T15:21:27","date_gmt":"2017-06-07T19:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/inside.gcschool.org\/gracegazette\/?p=992"},"modified":"2017-06-07T15:21:27","modified_gmt":"2017-06-07T19:21:27","slug":"history-legacy-gremlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/history-legacy-gremlin\/","title":{"rendered":"The History and Legacy of the Gremlin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mrs. Kuh, Director of Development for Grace Church School, recently sat down with me to discuss the role of the Gremlin as our school mascot from a different perspective than that of Ms. Arons, Chair of the Board of Trustees, captured in the recent article, <\/span>Wait\u2026 We\u2019re the Gremlins?<\/span><\/a> .<\/span><\/p>\n

As Director of Development, Mrs. Kuh\u2019s main job is to oversee fundraising for the school and its many functions, including raising funds for the scholarship fund, the faculty fund and large capital projects like the new gym at the high school campus. Several years ago, she was also responsible for communications at GCS. <\/span><\/p>\n

Mrs. Kuh has been a dedicated member of the Grace Church School community going back more than 20 years when she helped to create the original Gremlin as the school\u2019s mascot. Mrs. Kuh jokingly referred to herself as the mascot\u2019s \u201cmidwife\u201d pointing out that she was one of the primary people who aided in the creation of the Gremlin. \u201cIt came about because we didn\u2019t have a mascot. In fact, in those days, we were just starting to have real teams,\u201d said Mrs. Kuh. The original idea behind the Gremlin came from the gargoyles that can be found in the library of the 86 campus as well as on the outside of Grace Church. However, as \u2018gargoyle\u2019 isn\u2019t very catchy, and generally seems fairly intimidating, Mrs. Kuh searched for a happier alternative. Hence, the idea of the Gremlin came to be.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span>(gargoyle in the lower school library)<\/strong><\/p>\n

With the help of of Bonnie Erickson, a woman most famous for creating the character Miss Piggy from The Muppets as well as Phillie Phantic, the mascot of the Phillies, the MLB team of Philadelphia, helped to design the Gremlin itself. Her original design featured an elf-like character with its hands facing the sky.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"(the original gremlin)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Since then, the Gremlin has been altered by other artists for different events such as the construction of the high school campus <\/span>\u00a0and athletic wear<\/span>. Mrs. Kuh made a point that if the Gremlin has been modified since its origin, it can be modified again: \u201cMy feeling is, if people are worried about the look of the Gremlin, we could certainly change the look.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The branding committee of the Board of Trustees of GCS has been focusing for the past two years on refining the fonts, colors, images and icons that represent Grace Church School. However, according to Mrs. Kuh, \u201cIt hasn\u2019t dealt with the issue of the mascot.\u201d A proposal for reviewing the mascot was instead brought up in a much more casual sense than other aspects of the agenda for the meeting of the Board. \u201cIt was presented, I think, in a very negative way: all the things wrong with the Gremlin,\u201d added Mrs. Kuh.<\/span><\/p>\n

After it was brought up, discussion of the Gremlin was postponed and scheduled for the 2017-2018 school year. \u201cThere have been no board resolutions,\u201d Mrs. Kuh clarified.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Mrs. Kuh, a few focus groups will be put together to get a sense of the community\u2019s feelings towards the Gremlin as the school mascot. She added that changing the mascot would greatly affect the alumni of our school who are used to cheers of \u201cGo Gremlins!\u201d coming from the bleachers. \u201cThey might think it a little strange that every 20 years you can decide you\u2019re going to be somebody else,\u201d said Mrs. Kuh, and, according to her, it really is a matter of identity.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mrs. Kuh\u2019s prominent point throughout our discussion was that, instead of completely changing the mascot, it would be preferable to somehow alter the appearance of the Gremlin to make it more appealing to the community.<\/span><\/p>\n

As one of her final remarks, Mrs. Kuh referred to her own investment in the Gremlin: \u201cI\u2019m only going to tell my story, but I do think there is something about being consistent about who you are.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mrs. Kuh, Director of Development for Grace Church School, recently sat down with me to discuss the role of the Gremlin as our school mascot from a different perspective than… Continue reading “The History and Legacy of the Gremlin”<\/span> <\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":993,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[88,108],"appful":[],"class_list":["post-992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-school","tag-gremlin","tag-mascot"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9uEnr-g0","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=992"},{"taxonomy":"appful","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/appful?post=992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}