Robert Meyerowitz
In Hazelwood, on the north side of the airport, just off North Lindbergh Boulevard, there’s a small street whose name even local merchants don’t seem to recognize. And no wonder: Chapel Ridge Drive seems to be exclusively dotted with cookie-cutter apartments, and complexes such as Studio Plus and Extended Stay America. These are places that typically house transient people: folks who have lately been transferred to St. Louis for work; people who are in the midst of house-hunting; or people who are ultimately there for some other reason, say, because a house burned or a child died or a divorce has stranded them. Every day one sees the U-Haul trucks and other moving vans coming and going. It’s a pleasant-enough neighborhood but it can feel a little unmoored, like a lower-middle-class refugee camp.
And then there's the elephant and the giraffe.
The giraffe is a lean sentry in the corner of an auto shop parking lot, its neck bared above a high fence, gazing at a light pole, the barracks-like apartments, and the children who play in communal yards. It seems life-sized. So does the elephant, standing nearby in the same parking lot.
Both animals were put there by Bob Barks, who owns Complete Auto Body and Repair, on Lindbergh by Chapel Ridge. He ordered the elephant in June 2009 from the Philippines, which “was the only place where they could actually build one the way he wanted it,” explains his son, Kurt Barks, who runs his father’s two body shops. Bob wanted the fiberglass elephant—which cost about $16,000, shipped and delivered—as a tool to promote Backstoppers, the organization that supports families of police officers, firefighters, and other first-responders from Missouri and Illinois who are killed in the line of duty.
The fiberglass giraffe, obtained locally for about $4,200, was more of an afterthought. It overlooks a tiny park that Bob created behind Complete Auto Body to honor police and firefighters.
Complete Auto Body held a name-the-elephant contest earlier this year. The elephant is named Bella now. The giraffe doesn’t have a name.
Bella, who is mounted on a trailer, has traveled all over St. Louis and beyond in the line of her Backstoppers duties. The giraffe is rooted in one spot.
Bob wanted an elephant “because of what they represent,” says Kurt. “A pride and a trust. They’re big and powerful and respected—the proper way would not be to say an elephant demands respect but that it deserves respect.”
What does a giraffe represent? Vision, perhaps. Farsightedness. A willingness to stick one’s neck out. A willingness to stand out. Exoticism. The improbable. Purple tongues.
Bob just thought it would be kind of cute to have a giraffe there, Kurt says. (And really, how else does one acquire a giraffe?) “He wanted something that, when the kids came by, they could relate to it. We’re taking a commercial area and trying to make it more hometown-friendly. Everybody nowadays seems to be angry or frustrated and it just lightens the mood a little. It’s just trying to bring some fun back to everything.”
Fun it might be for the kids. Seeing it through the trees, at night, under the light, it can also make an adult feel a little less alone.
