Take me everywhere: Celebrating National American Teddy Bear Day
Courtesy of Megan Morris
Megan Morris’ teddy bear Snuggles has been a constant companion throughout the Strabane woman’s life. Morris received the teddy from her grandmother, Fern Morris, the day she was born, and plans to gift Snuggles to her own daughter.
Courtesy of Tatyana Swanson
Tatyana Swanson’s teddy bear, Merlin, keeps her company during the classical musician’s commutes. The Bethel Park resident has enjoyed the company of her stuffed friend since purchasing him on a trip to Volant in 1995.
Courtesy of Tatyana Swanson
Tatyana Swanson found her best stuffed animal friend, Merlin, on a shopping trip in Volant in 1995. The teddy bear has accompanied Swanson and her husband on cruises, on their motorcycle rides and even stayed by her side during Swansons surgeries.
The teddy bear: A soft, cuddly thing that has for more than a century served as childhood companion, faithful friend and artistic inspiration.
The teddy bear is so beloved, in fact, that we celebrate the stuffed bundle of joy a little bit extra every Nov. 14, National American Teddy Bear Day.
America’s love affair with teddy bears began in 1902, the year President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt famously refused to pull his trigger on a helpless bear during a hunting expedition. Political cartoonist Clifford Berryman turned the moment into a comic for The Washington Post. New Yorker Morris Michtom was struck by “Drawing the Line in Mississippi” and commissioned his wife, Rose Michtom, to craft a small, stuffed bear for the family’s Brooklyn candy shop window.
The toy, neatly labeled “teddy bear,” was such a hit that the Michtoms launched Ideal Toy Co. and wrote the president for permission to name their line of stuffed animals bears after him. Roosevelt said yes, and the teddy bear craze began in full force.
“Its origins, starting in America, being connected to an American president, it’s really such an American tradition,” said Cassandra Clayton, brand creative and designer for Vermont Teddy Bear, one of the nation’s oldest teddy bear manufacturers, and which still offers a line of handcrafted toys. “There is something so cute and likable about a teddy bear. It, for some reason, has this universal appeal that is almost undefinable. There’s just that nostalgic component that carries from generation to generation.”
It seems every generation features the teddy bear in pop culture, from Elvis’s “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear” to Michael Bond’s children series “Paddington Bear” to Gen X’s Care Bears, which Millenials revived in their grade school days. A teddy bear even stars in Seth MacFarlane’s 2012 film, “Ted.”
“You think teddy bear, it’s a fun play thing. But people really turn to these stuffed animals at some of the best times in their lives and some of the worst times of their lives,” said Clayton. “It has really stood the test of time and become this really iconic piece of everyone’s childhood.”
Iconic, indeed, is Megan Morris’ childhood teddy. The Strabane resident still has the first stuffed animal toy she was ever gifted, on the day of her birth.
“My grandmother, she gave me the Snuggle bear – the actual Snuggle bear from the commercials and the dryer sheets. She gave that to me as soon as I was born. I’ve had it all throughout my life,” she said. “He’s a little roughed-up right now. He is on one of the shelves in my bedroom.”
During childhood, Snuggles accompanied Morris on trips and sleepovers to her grandmother’s home in Canonsburg, where Fern Morris, a seamstress, sewed outfits for the stuffed bear.
“The Hidden Treasures, they used to call it the Five and Dime. I would stay over my grandma’s. She’d make him a new suit and we’d go to the Five and Dime and she’d let me pick a toy,” said Morris, who never ventured out shopping without Snuggles. “I got to take him out with his little suits and everything. That’s some of the best memories I’ve had with my grandma.”
Throughout her life, Snuggles has been a fixture in Morris’ bedroom, save a short period when Morris thought her friend was lost forever.
“There was a time between moving when I thought he got lost. I thought he was gone forever. I was devastated – until my parents found him in one of the boxes that I had stored (at their house),” she said.
The bear remains part of the furniture, a well-loved teddy whose stuffed heart bursts at the seams with memory and meaning.
“That’s, like, the one thing that I feel like I still have connected to my grandmother,” Morris said, adding she hopes to pass Snuggles on to her daughter, now 12, for companionship as the preteen navigates growing up.
It wasn’t until she was a grownup that Tatyana Swanson, who immigrated from Russia to Southwestern Pennsylvania in 1991, found her favorite stuffed friend. While shopping in Volant, a small teddy bear caught the classical musician’s eye, and she promptly purchased the bundle of brown fur, dressed him in a green sweater to match her eyes and named him Merlin.
“He lives in the car. I’ve been driving him everywhere with me since 1995,” laughed Swanson, who lives in Bethel Park with her husband and their dog Dexter. “He’s been everywhere. He’s been on motorcycles, he’s been on cruises, he’s been on all the islands of the Western Caribbean and Southern Caribbean. He took me through two marriages, two motorcycles. I’ve actually taken him to the hospital for a couple surgeries. I’ve actually dragged him a couple times into my studio and … use him as a prop for teaching. He’s pretty ratty, but he’s a good bear.”
Like Morris, Swanson once believed her beloved buddy was lost.
“When we were moving from house to house, I almost lost him. I was completely over myself,” she said. “I finally found him in one of the boxes. I actually gave him a bath and put him back in the car.”
Swanson said she used to hang Merlin’s sweaters on miniature hangers, but thought it was getting ridiculous, so her bear now sports his signature green top always. As a little girl, Swanson loved her stuffed animals, and attributes her attachment to her teddy bear to her move overseas. When she found Merlin, she’d only been in America a few years, and was still assimilating to the culture, she said.
“We all find meaning in odd things,” Swanson said.
Helping to heal
When Makenzie Barchiesi was 9 months old, she was admitted to the hospital for the first time. During the stay her parents, Dawn and David Calabrese, purchased a teddy bear in the gift shop for their little girl.
“That teddy bear is now at Duquesne University with her,” said Dawn Calabrese, of Waynesburg.
Bearby, as Barchiesi affectionately calls her stuffed BFF, was a source of comfort during many hospital stays.
“She was a sick kid,” said Calabrese. “(Bearby) has been in Children’s Hospital for weeks at a time. He’s been in Cleveland Clinic for weeks at a time. She had brain surgery, and he was with her. He has had quite the life. He’s really been her best friend.”
Bearby helped Barchiesi recover from a stroke at age 12, which left the young woman unable to walk or talk. He was also there to congratulate Barchiesi when she graduated magna cum laude from Waynesburg High School, and is cheering her on as she navigates college life in the city.
The teddy, now ragged from decades of love, Calabrese said, is meaningful to her as a mom, too.
“You buy stuffed animals all the time, as a parent. You really don’t know what impact they are going to have, and Bearby has really had quite the impact,” Calabrese said. “It’s always good to know when you can’t be there with (your kids), someone else is. She holds onto him every night. He doesn’t sit on a shelf. He’s her person.”
Local fire and police departments understand how comforting stuffed animals are, and keep plush toys on hand for distribution to children at the scenes of fires and accidents.
“We have for many years carried on each truck a big plastic tote (with) stuffed animals – a lot of them were little teddy bears. Anytime we had a situation where there were some young kids involved, especially if it was a tough call and they appeared to be scared, confused, we always made sure we gave them something from that bin,” said Canonsburg Volunteer Fire Department Chief Tim Solobay. “That smile, that vision of that child hugging that thing, you can’t even put it into words. We’re there to do a job, but also there to kind of help heal and minimize the trauma of a situation. Just seeing that smile on that child’s face is worth every bit of what we do.”
Teddy bears and other stuffed animals are supplied to CVFD by firefighters themselves, and the department has an excellent working relationship with Rite Aid and Family Dollar, which both donate surplus bears, Solobay said.
Firefighters with the city of Washington supply their own teddy bears and assorted stuffed animals, and Chief Chris Richer said the program, which his department doesn’t make a big to-do about, provides comfort to children in dire situations.
“I can remember a vehicle accident in particular, where the child was injured in the backseat and terrified, and the mother was being treated by the paramedics. The minute you put that stuffed animal in their hands, their fear subsides,” Richer said. “Thankfully we don’t have to do it too often.”
Richer speculates that the universal childhood experience of teddy bears is why the toy is so comforting in tough moments.
“If I were to put my psychological hat on, I think most children, regardless of where you come from, grow up with a teddy bear or stuffed animal of some sort. It gives them something soft to hold. It just signifies, in their mind, safety and security. When do children have bears? Mostly when they go to sleep and it’s dark. I think mentally they revert back to that sense of security.”
As the years pass by, the teddy bear endures, a symbol of safety, childhood and, ultimately, love.
“Teddy bears really seem to embody love in a certain way. They’re just so cute and cuddly. They make you smile,” said Clayton. “There are so many reasons why people buy teddy bears, from a newborn baby coming into the family or the loss of a loved one, a father who is in the military being deployed or someone who just graduated college. There are so many different moments that people choose to give teddy bears. I think they’ve become iconic. Young and old, no matter the age, everyone loves teddy bears.”