A Short History
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Winston, Oregon
The Winston-Dillard Area Chamber of Commerce decided in about 1986 that they should do something to improve the triangle area at the traffic light. The area at that time was covered with scotchbroom about five or six feet high with cement blocks and other trash mixed in to create an extremely unsightly eyesore in the center of town.
A Chamber committee was formed to see what could be done to improve this image. Jim McClellan who worked for the Winston-Dillard Public Schools decided to take a color picture of the area. Shortly after he took the picture, a committee of Chamber members cleaned up the area. Someone suggested we needed a statue on the site. Someone else suggested a cheetah statue. The cheetah was suggested because it was the visual symbol of Wildlife Safari our world famous drive through exotic animal park. The committee did not have anyone with an art background, but they all agreed any statue of a cheetah would have to look like an actual cheetah and be about one and a half times life size.
Over a period of at least a year, the committee met with many artists to see samples of their work. These ranged from artists who wanted to make the statue out of old car bodies, foam, laminated madrone, cement, and bronze. Most of the samples the committee reviewed were more modernistic than realistic. For more detail on the artist, etc. see the reprints from the Eugene Register-Guard, Roseburg’s The News-Review and the Winston-Dillard Area Chamber of Commerce Newsletter on the following pages.
Random Remembrances:
The Oregon Highway Division (OHD), now the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), did not want the statue because if would interfere with traffic because it was going to be too large. The committee met at the Dillard Steak House for lunch with Marty Havig, a representative of the OHD in Green. McClellan had the "before" picture (above) of the triangle blown up to 16 X 20 by Chamber member Gary Leif. He had also taken another picture after the triangle was cleared with Winston City Administrator Dave Waffle holding a copy of Wildlife Safari’s running cheetah logo, that was about five feet high, in the center of the triangle. Leif had also blown this picture up to 16 X 20. McClellan showed Havig the first picture of the scotchbroom blocking any possible view across the triangle. Then he showed the picture of Waffle holding the cheetah logo. The differences were extremely dramatic. Havig said, "OK, but it will have to be a break-a-way statue." This meant that if an old Volkswagen "Bug" hits the statue, the "VW" will "survive!" The committee agreed to work with Havig and OHD to meet their requirements.
We’ve been asked why not a running cheetah. The answer would have to be a cheetah seems to have either all four feet on the ground or they are in the air when it is running. The standing pose gives more strength to the statue and the tail was reinforced to hold very small children who sometimes sit on it.
After the cheetah was completed, it was decided to provide lighting at night. Havig, again said no; it would blind drivers and could cause accidents. McClellan and another committee member agreed to meet with Havig one evening after dark to see exactly what the Chamber was seeking. Havig walked up Main Street to about where Willee’s Restaurant is now located and McClellan held the light fixture. About that time, a large truck came up Main Street from the south with its high beam on. The result was that Havig could not even see the light McClellan was holding! He agreed the Chamber could light the cheetah!
When the cheetah and lighting were completed, the Chamber turned them over to the City with the understanding the Chamber would continue to pay for the lighting expenses. For a number of years, Mary Marshall, former Chamber president, personally maintained the finish on the statue. The planters on each corner where various plants have been placed and where the light fixtures are located have caused slight problems when the plants grow too high and obstruct views for drivers. The City continues to monitor this. Also, at one time there was water piped to each planter, but that has been removed because of some problems with the pipes.
In the 1990’s the City painted the asphalt a green color which is easier to maintain and also adds some color to the area.
If you haven’t seen a dog go by the statue, you don’t know how accurate the image really is. Dogs walking by on a leash will sometimes stop, set their legs and just stare at the cheetah! Dogs in vehicles will bark.
Over the years various individuals and groups have decorated the cheetah for a specific event; in general they have removed the decorations afterwards, thus keeping it looking great!
Thursday, January 9, 1986 (The News Review)
Stand like a statue
News-Review photo by Alan Buckingham
Wildlife Safari employee Laurie Marker has cheetah Khayam model for a project that would have a reproduction of the cheetah built at the intersections of Highways 42 and 99 in downtown Winston. The statue will be larger than life, about 5 feet long and 8 feet high. Chamber of Commerce Vice President Betty Fortino said the statue will cost about $30,000 and the chamber has applied for a matching funds grant from the Oregon Arts Commission. She said the statue would be made of alder and a sculptor would be chosen in open competition. A fundraiser feathering an airband competition and dance is scheduled from 7:30 p.m. to midnight Jan. 25. at Winston Junior High School. Entries must be submitted before Jan. 16 to Douglas High School leadership class or at the Winston Coast to Coast. Advance tickets are $3 per couple and $2 per person. Tickets are 50 cents extra at the door.
Bronze cheetah will stalk Winston triangle
by MARJORIE NASON of the News Review photo by DON MUTZ News-Review
(THE NEWS-REVIEW, Roseburg, Oregon, Monday, Septemer 20, 1986)
Eugene artist Dennis Jones has been selected to sculpt a bronze statue of a cheetah that will stand in the triangle intersection of Highway 42 and 99 in Winston.
Jones was selected from five finalists in competition for the project sponsored by the Winston Chamber of Commerce. Betty Fortino, project chairman, said this morning.
The statue will be larger than life, about 5 feet tall and 8 feet long. Estimated cost of the statue, including shipping to Winston and installation in the triangle, is $11,500. Fortino said the target date for installation is before the annual Safari Run in May.
The committee has had some fundraisers for the project and plans to have more to pay for the statue. Also, the committee plans to seek state arts grants and donations from the public to help fund the project.
Jones, a native of South Dakota, attended Utah Technical College in Salt Lake City, majoring in commerical art. After graduation, he moved to Oregon and began combining his love of the outdoors with his artistic skills to begin as a wildlife artist. His wildlife paintings have been purchased by people across the United States and in Canada and Europe.
More recently, he began sculpting and his work has won recognition by both outdoorsmen and art collectors. Within the first year he sold more than 70 bronzes.
Jones is represented by Northwest Passage of Eugene, which has also proposed smaller scale, limited edition bronzes of the same composition as the one to be placed in the triangle. These would be 5-inches tall by 8-inches long and would be sold for about $1,000, with a portion of the money going toward the cost of the triangle project.
Cat springs back to life in bronze
| by PAUL DENISON photos by PAT DENISON
(THE REGISTER GUARD, Eugene, Oregon, Friday, May 1, 1987) Khayam, a celebrity cheetah who was worth her weight in gold, will live forever in bronze thanks to her civic admirers and Junction City sculptor Dennis Jones. Khayam, beloved goodwill ambassador for Wildlife Safari, died last Nov. 26 of kidney failure. The Winston-Dillard Chamber of Commerce, which had been looking for a way to show the towns’ appreciation for Wildlife Safari, decided to commission a statue of Khayam by an Oregon artist. Although Jones specializes in North American wildlife and had never sculpted an African cat, he pounced on the opportunity. He did his homework, made a small sample sculpture of a running cheetah to show his style and beat out four other finalists for the $20,000 project. |
Completed earlier this month, Jones’ larger-than-life sculpture of Khayam will be unveiled and dedicated during Winston Safari Days and Spring Festival this Saturday and Sunday. From now on, Khayam will stand watch from a pedestal at the Winston highway triangle intersection.
Money for the project has been raised through fund-raising events, grants, donations and the sale of $10 bricks engraved with the donor’s name and used as a base for the sculpture.
Khayam was born at Wildlife Safari on December 4, 1976. Trainer Laurie Marker picked her from a litter of five because she was "the only one that acted calm when being handled for vaccination. The others were typical spitfires." Raised by Marker with significant assistance from her dog, Sheso, as surrogate mother, Khayam turned out to be "a perfectly calm cat."
During the winter of 1977-78, Marker spent more than two months in Africa with Khayam taking care of her through a critical illness that required two operations and then training her to hunt in the wild. Khayam then showed off her newly acquired skills on an ABC "American Sportsma" TV special with Olivia Newton-John as guest celebrity.
On the way home, Marker recalled in Wildlife Safari’s Spring 1977 newsletter, she took Khayam out to dinner at the Kalahari Sands Hotel in Winhoek, South Africa:
"This 14-month-old cat who had just been running free and acting as a wild carnivore should, calmly walked with me into a disco atmosphere, crowded with people and loud music, and nonchalantly lay down, then lapped mile and other food offerings brought to her by the waiters while we ate our own six-course dinner."
Khayam spent the rest of her life making personal appearances to publicize Wildlife Safari and its cheetah breeding program. She met movie stars and governors, served as guest of honor at black tie dinners for major foundations, appeared on national TV shows.
When Khayam became ill in February 1986, Marker needed a substitute cheetah for a World Wildlife Fund event. She found there were only five hand-raised cheetahs in the country, and not one of them could do everything Khayam could: take a regular airline flight, stay in a hotel or motel room, give running exhibitions and put up with large crowds, long dinners and hours of petting.
Khayam died three days after a kidney transplant operation from Blondie, another Wildlife Safari cheetah. News of her death brought in dozens of letters from those who had been touched by her "sheer beauty, power and incredible nobility" and promoted Wildlife Safari to establish a Khayam Memorial Fund. the account was opened with $100 from students at McGovern Elementary School in Winston.
When Dennis Jones won the Chamber of Commerce commission to memorialize this special cat, he knew his first full-size cheetah would have to be a very good one.
After intensive research including several measurement-taking sessions with Damara, another Wildlife Safari cheetah, Jones constructed a complete cheetah skeleton and then built the body around it to achieve maximum authenticity. After getting the wax model approved, Jones borrowed a cargo van from Romania Chevrolet and hauled the sculpture to Valley Bronze in Joseph. Foundry workers spent six weeks converting it to metal.
When they had finished, Jones and Marker went to Joseph and spent three days painting on spots, working from Khayam’s tanned hide to get the pattern just right. Jones hauled the completed bronze statue home two weeks ago. Temporarily sitting on a trailer in his front yard, the five and one-half foot tall cheetah worked better than a stop sign on motorists driving by.
Jones says he has learned much from the process of sculpting Khayam, his first major piece, and hopes someday to study African wildlife up close on a Wildlife Safari filming trip with Marker.
Until Khayam came along, Jones had concentrated on smaller sculptures of the North American game animals he has been hunting since boyhood in South Dakota.
Jones began studying taxidermy when he was 11, majored in commercial art and advertising at Utah Technical College and worked as a free lance wildlife painter while making his living in the sheet metal trade. When Òthe economy went belly up,Ó Jones found work for a time painting wildlife art miniatures on hunting and target bows for Golden Eagle Archery in Creswell. He decided about three years ago to explore bronze sculpture.
He’s been successful from the start, he says, and now makes his living from bronze sculpture alone. His limited edition sculptures of elk, deer, sheep, eagles, llamas, cougars, and two-legged hunters currently range in price from $400 to $4,200, depending on edition size, sculpture size, foundry costs, difficulty and demand. Jones shows in Western states galleries and has done work on commission from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the Minnesota Ducks Unlimited organization, among others.
A bowhunter by choice for the past 14 years, Jones draws on field experience and photographs to make his sculptures as accurate and realistic as possible, whether he’s sculpting a tired hunter on his way home or a cougar bringing down a big horn sheep.
Jones has retained mold rights to his Khayam sculpture, but even if he never has another cheetah customer, he has a living reminder of his Wildlife Safari experience – one of the 12 pups born recently to a Rhodesian ridgeback dog that helped raise Khayam.
"He’ll be something to remember the whole thing by," Jones says. "Right now, though, he’s just busy chewing up everything I own."
W-D Area Chamber of Commerce – Newsletter Articles
Triangle Project
(Volume X, November 1986)
A new feature each month will be a report on the Triangle Project. To refresh your memory, we are in the process of improving the triangle at the traffic light in Winston.
A committee of Chamber members has been working on this for over a year. To date they have met with reprsentatives of the Oregon Highway Department to get tentative permission to erect a statue of a cheetah on a circular base of bricks surrounded by a green outdoor carpet on planters containing seasonal flowers.
Most of the bricks will be sold with a person’s name engraved on them. Bricks are being sold for $10 each. To date about 199 have been sold. The Chamber still has about 600 that need to be sold. A person might purchaseone in a child or grandchild’s name for a stocking stuffer at Christmas. If you would like to buy a brick, please contact on the of the following: Douglas National Bank, Umpqua Savings & Loan, The Green Tree Inn, Coast to Coast, or Winston City Hall.
The committee has selected artist Dennis Jones from Eugene to do the bronze sculpture of a standing five foot cheetah. Jones was selected after a lengthy search of many artists. The committee considered wood, including laminated wood, aggregate (crushed granite), foam, and bronze before deciding on bronze. They considered possible vandalism, possible chemical reactions from exhaust fumes, changes in temperature from July to January, effects of sunlight, ease of maintenance over a long period of time, etc. Bronze was selected because of its durability over many years.
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Triangle Project
(Volume X, December 1986)
Last month we said each month we would bring you a report of the Triangle Project.
By November we had sold a total of 199 bricks. In the last month we have sold 23 more!
There is still time before Christmas to purchase one for a stocking stuffer. Take your $10 to one of the following: Douglas National Bank, Umpqua Savings and Loan, The Green Tree Inn, Coast of Coast, Winston City Hall, Leif Studios, or Wildlife Safari.
Chamber members are also selling tickets for a drawing to be held at our regular Decmber Chamber meeting, Tuesday, December 23, 1986. These tickets are $1 or six for $5. One lucky ticket holder will receive a $200.00 shopping spree at a local business! All money over the actual $200 prize will go toward the Triangle Project.
Buy your tickets before the drawing!
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Spaghetti Feed to raise money for Cheetah Statue, Friday, February 6th
(Volume XI, January 1987)
Friday evening from 5:00 – 7:30 in the Winston Community Building the W-D Chamber Triangle Committee will sponsor a community spaghetti feed to raise money for the cheetah statue.
Tickets will be $3.50 each and may be obtained from the Coast to Coast Store, Douglas National Bank, Winston City Hall or at our January 27th meeting.
The spaghetti will feature Betty Fortino’s Famous Sauce!
Let’s support this very worthwhile event!
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Cheetah Statue Report
(Volume XI, February 1987)
The Triangle Committee cleared $373 at Dave Waffle’s Roast. This money will be added to the over $4,100 in brick sales and over $1,000 for the cheetah statue itself.
Letters have been sent to many people in and out of this area soliciting money for the statue. The Winston Safari Days Committee is planning a special event for the official unveiling on May 2nd.
Watch for further fund raising activities as we wind up this community beautification project.
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Cheetah Unveiling
(Volume XI, April 1987)
Winston Safari Days activities are progresing very well. The highlight on Saturday, May 2nd will be the unveiling of the Cheetah Statue at 10:00 a.m. in the Triangle by the traffic lights.
The statue will be set a day or two before, but kept covered until 10:00 a.m. Laurie Marker will do the honors to this monument to Khayam, the symbol of the cheetah.
The event will be preceded by a no-host continental breakfast in Le Joi Restaurant at 9:00 a.m. Don Clithero, staton manager at KPIC-TV, will be master of ceremonies at the breakfast.
If you would lke to attend the breakfast, please RSVP by April 30, 1987 to 679-8774 (Douglas National Bank) or 679-8380 (Coast to Coast).
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Cheetah in place!
(Volume XI, May 1987)
The cheetah statue is paid for and in place! We still would like to install green indoor/outdoor carpet over the blacktop area. We have been asked to look into installing lights that would illuminate Khayam but not blind drivers on the highway.
We have heard a few comments about, "Why didn’t you put it on a pedestal?" We didn’t because the state said we had to have a break-a-way point a few inches above ground level. The state is concerned about liability if someone hits it with their vehicle.
Your Chamber is in the process of developing a small brochure to explain the statue to travelers who ask about it. We hope to include such things as a brief history of Khayam and a brief background on where the statue was cast. For those of you who don’t know, it was cast at the Valley Bronze Foundry in Joseph, Oregon. Yes, Joseph! This foundry opened in the summer of 1982 in an economically depressed area. It started with three employees and a handful of local sculptors. It now has expanded to 45 employees and a following among some of the country’s best artists.
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Triangle Improvements Planned!
(Volume XI, July 1987)
The Triangle Committee has met with representatives of the State Highway Division to explore the possibility of the Chamber Lighting the statue.
Marty Hermann from Sims Electric has worked with Betty Fortino and Mary Marshall to develop a tentative design that would place lights in each planter. These would focus on the statue and be shielded from traffic with deflectors in the light fixture. Each light would have a 300-500 watt bulb.
The Highway Division also has tentatively agreed to remove the small signs indicating Highway 99 South. Removal of these would make the statue much more visible.
President Fortino is working on a grant to obtain funds to do the lighting.
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