{"id":67407,"date":"2024-04-06T21:31:40","date_gmt":"2024-04-06T21:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/?p=67407"},"modified":"2024-04-15T22:28:39","modified_gmt":"2024-04-15T22:28:39","slug":"the-downtown-ducks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/67407","title":{"rendered":"The Downtown Ducks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Reading this book will make your day. And if you give it as a gift, you&#8217;ll be doing the same for others, and then when your recipients call to tell you it made their day, you&#8217;ll get a made day all over again. It&#8217;s the applause kind of ripples-on-a-pond story (actually the Spokane River in Washington) that we can&#8217;t seem to get enough of. Thank you to the banker, who in real life rescued the paddling of ducklings, catching them one by one midair, and the onlookers who cheered him on. Thank you to the author, an attorney, who decided to rally his mother, age 79, and his daughter, age 12, to help him illustrate it. And if you&#8217;re a boomer like me, who raised a brood of children reading them the classic 1941 <em>Make Way for Ducklings<\/em> book about a pair of mallards who raised their brood in the Boston Public Garden and a police officer who stops traffic for them, you\u2019ll probably still remember reading this out loud hundreds of times: <em>Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Quark, Quack, and Pack<\/em>. And you might even remember that the bronze statue of the ducks that was erected in the Boston Public Garden took on global ramifications when Barbara Bush gave a duplicate statue to Raisa Gorbechev as part of the START treaty. Now we\u2019re talking world diplomacy, which is exactly where <em>The Downtown Ducks<\/em> is headed, because the event has already made front-page news in the UK and none other than the Whitehouse called to congratulate all involved for such a positive story. During the past few weeks, I\u2019ve taken my morning tea in the company of a Mallard couple, this year\u2019s residents on my pond. For me, they represent all that\u2019s right in the world and rightly so. <em>The Downtown Ducks<\/em> does likewise; it encourages us to continue paddling against current strife and angst, underwater, just beneath the surface, as fast as we can.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"473\" height=\"640\" src=\"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Image-6.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-67406\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed aligncenter is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Spokane&#039;s Downtown Duck Tale goes global\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/e6ka45hSBGo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>By&nbsp;<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.spokesman.com\/staff\/roberta-simonson\/\"><strong>Roberta Simonson<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In May 2008, Spokane banker Joel Armstrong had been keeping tabs on a mother duck and her 10 eggs, nested on the concrete awning outside his second-floor downtown office window, for weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One morning, Armstrong watched as the mother mallard flew down to the sidewalk and started quacking up at her day-old ducklings, at least 10 feet above. The first fuzzy bird waddled to the ledge\u2019s edge and leapt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Normally, Armstrong said, he doesn\u2019t interfere with nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBut then I saw one hit (the concrete) and bounce \u2026 my heart just opened and I had to go out and help.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Armstrong ran outside, stood under the awning and caught the ducklings one by one before setting them on the sidewalk with their mother. Then he escorted the entire duck family \u2013 the first duckling was stunned but lived \u2013 to the Spokane River.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nearly 16 years later, in 2024, another Spokane man, attorney Richard Repp, has preserved Armstrong\u2019s 2008 heroics in a children\u2019s book, \u201cThe Downtown Ducks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI just always thought it was such a cute story, I just thought, well, that\u2019s a perfect children\u2019s story,\u201d Repp said. \u201cThe building where it happened, the Cutter Tower, my office was in the US Bank building right next door \u2026 everyone was talking about it at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indeed, after an email&nbsp;chronicling the event went viral, Armstrong\u2019s actions, which he repeated when the mallard nested there for a few more years, received national&nbsp;and even foreign&nbsp;attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cA lot of people just were enthralled by the story,\u201d Armstrong said. \u201cIt was during a tough time in the banking industry, and it was some really good, positive news just to make people happy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Repp referenced 2008&nbsp;and 2009&nbsp;Spokesman-Review stories about Spokane\u2019s \u201cduck guy\u201d when creating \u201cThe Downtown Ducks.\u201d In 2009, the ducklings hatched on the same day as the Lilac Parade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201c2009 was the year that the parade was involved; 2008 was the year that it first happened. I took some artistic license and I tried to just combine the two years into one story,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Though Repp wrote the book alone, he illustrated it with the help of his mother Mary, 79, and daughter Anya, 12.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI wanted my mom to be involved as a sort of a legacy for my mom because my mom was an artist that really contributed to my interest in art and books,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Growing up, Repp wanted to be a cartoon artist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As for his daughter, \u201cshe already enjoyed doing art and so this was kind of fun for us, to be sitting at the kitchen table together, doing it together,\u201d Repp said. \u201cShe was one of the ones that kept sort of egging me on, like, \u2018When are you gonna finish your book, Dad? When are you gonna finish your book? I want to see it.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Repp wrote and illustrated the book over several months starting in winter 2022. When he made some copies via Shutterfly and distributed them to friends and family in 2023, \u201cthey loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cA lot of people were surprised to have learned that I could even draw because I haven\u2019t really used my drawing in years,\u201d he said. \u201cInitially this was just a gift for family, but it was so well received, and people embraced it and I was like, \u2018OK, well, if people enjoy it, let\u2019s share.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Repp reached out to Armstrong in the fall and told him about the book. Armstrong bought copies for himself and his family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI thought it was a great job just telling the story, but I loved his artwork because he did it himself,\u201d Armstrong said. \u201cHe\u2019s a great artist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In writing \u201cThe Downtown Ducks,\u201d Repp hopes to ensure the survival of Spokane\u2019s duck story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOver time people forget about news stories, but there are certain children\u2019s books that last forever,\u201d he said. \u201cI read \u2018Curious George\u2019 to my children and Dr. Seuss to my children. It was the same books that I read when I was a child.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cFor me, creating a children\u2019s story was a way to preserve the story and to pass it on to my children. It\u2019s just such a fun, heartwarming, happy, feel-good story. I think it\u2019s important to preserve it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe Downtown Ducks\u201d can be purchased online at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Walmart or ThriftBooks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Roberta Simonson&#8217;s reporting is part of the Teen Journalism Institute, funded by Bank of America with support from the Innovia Foundation.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reading this book will make your day. And if you give it as a gift, you&#8217;ll be doing the same for others, and then when your recipients call to tell you it made their day, you&#8217;ll get a made day &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/67407\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-glitterati"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67407"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67461,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67407\/revisions\/67461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}