Stella was removed from Allen Park because of the asbestos. Now you have to do a feature story on the person who built Stella, Sally Huggins.
Below are the notes taken during interviews. Some information contains facts, other pieces of information are her opinion and thoughts. Other sources have been used to expand the scope of the story.
Don’t direct quote everything. The quote marks indicate she is telling her story. Use some paraphrases to make the story interesting. Don’t just put the information in the same order. Use the inverted pyramid.
Be careful. The information contains a number of AP Style mistakes. You are expected to correct the mistakes and any other spelling or grammatical mistakes. Be sure to do a well-rounded story.
Here are interview notes:
Huggins is in the anthropology department at Central University where she has taught for 28 years.
“I was devastated when the city removed Stella from the park. She was my baby when I molded her into shape 32 years ago. When we were kids, there was a big rock in Allen park. All of us kids used to climb around on it. But somebody moved it and there was nothing to climb on. Just swings and the regular stuff.
“So when I took my own baby to the park one day, I got the idea to build something she could climb on like I did as a kid. Kids are fascinated by dinosaurs, so I thought that would be the ticker. Actually, paleontology is not my field, but I knew enough to decide on a stegosaurus. They have lots of plates sticking up from their back and those would give kids a good grip.
“It took me two years to mold Stella into shape. I worked in the Dinosaur Lab here at Central, and used a special amalgam cement. We stuffed it with asbestos because we had a lot left over from another project. That way, it didn’t cost anything. I had no idea the asbestos would turn out to be dangerous three decades later.
“We installed the dinosaur at the park, and my daughter was the first to climb up its back. Her name was Stella and that sounded god with stegosaurus, so named the dinosaur Stella after my daughter. Her daughter, my granddaughter, even got to play on Stella. Thousands of kids have. So I guess the old girl lived a full, useful life.
“But I am talking to city official now to see about building a new stegosaurus. This one would be out of plastic and stuffed with foam. I would enjoy doing it. Who knows. It might just be that All park will have another Stella the stegosaurus, real soon.
You call Montgomery Lawson, director of exhibits at the Turner Museum in the capital city. He was a paleontologist at Stanford University for 30 years until he retired last year and took on the museum job. You ask him about the stegosaurus.
“Stegosaurus means literally ‘roofed lizard.’ The man who named it thought the plates on its back looked like roof shingles. Pretty funny, hun?
“The stegosaurus lived about 150 million years ago. They were plentiful in many places on Earth. They were from 15 to 20 feet long. If this stego you are talking about was 23 feet, it was bigger than normal. A stego would weight two tons. Its back feet were twice as long as its front feet, putting its rear end eight feet in the air. But its head was very, very tiny, with a brain about the size of a walnut.
“The stegos had a double row of bony plates running along the back. They were shaped like the spades in a deck of cars. The plates in each row ere not side by side, but alternated. In kind of a zigzag pattern. My theory is that this allowed for maximum air flow and helped to cool such a monster. But nobody knows for sure.
“The stego’s tail was about 10 feet long. At the end were two pairs of big spikes, shaped kind of like a rhino’s horn. I image when another animal got hit with that tail, or those spikes, it smarted. Ha, Ha.
Finally, you call Clark Gordon, supervisor at Allen Park, about the possibility of a new Stella.
“Yeh, I have talked to the Huggins woman. She wants to put in a new dinosaur for the kids. Problem is, there is no money in the parks department budget. It cost $2,100 just to get the last dinosaur out of here. Mrs. Huggins said it cost only $148 to build. But a new one would cost 10 or 12 thousand. That’s because we would have to supply all the materials this time. And all the safety regulations cost big bucks to administer. So, I don’t know now. Time will tell.”