Hippo-sized History: The Journey of MFS's Beloved Icon

For almost 55 years, the Hippo statue at MFS has been a symbol of student autonomy; it began as a spontaneous art project and has cemented many traditions in the community. Originally planned to be a rhino, the idea for the Hippo came from three fourth graders from the class of 1980: Chris Musulin, Bobby Hamilton, and Grant Lippincott. What was an idea to build something in homage to Hamilton, whose nickname was “Rhino,” eventually evolved into a permanent community project. After two moves and several models later, the beloved Hippo resides in front of the White Building. Musulin explained that the Hippo was to be the first in a group of three animal statues, but the other two were abandoned due to difficulties in creating the first. “The second [statue] would have been a giraffe that would have looked into the second story of the elementary building in the middle. We never really came up with the third animal,” he said. According to Musulin, the original statue, which was built in 1972 and decidedly a hippo after the students could not figure out how to craft the horns, was made of wood, chicken wire, and plaster of Paris. “It was the color of cement, and it was as ugly as the day is long … We had no clue what we were doing,” he said.

The 1998 Among Friends magazine, which featured the 25th anniversary of the Hippo, wrote that the wooden frame came from driftwood that “had washed up on the shore of the Delaware River.” However, Musulin said this was a rumor. “I think they used real new [wood] … We used the institutional size clay peach cans for the nose, and we just slopped it together,” said Musulin.

The “silly-looking” statue caused controversy at the time of its creation, as it was built without the permission of the township, according to Musulin. “What was particularly funny was that members of the [Moorestown] Monthly Meeting hated it, and they were appalled that it was placed. They thought it was ugly and terrible,” he recalled. Over the course of a month, the fourth graders received help from faculty and several other Upper School community members to build the first iteration of the Hippo. At the time, Bernestine Wallauer was the Lower School art teacher, and the fourth-grade teachers were Jacqueline Hockenbury and Joseph Taylor, according to the 1971-1972 MFS Parent-Teacher Association Directory. “It was just a bizarre early 1970s win. There was no great thought that went into it,” said Musulin. According to Musulin, the class of 1981 set the statue on fire shortly after he graduated. A 1997 “Memo to the File,” compiled from memories of Musulin and faculty members, noted that “the Hippo was destroyed by vandals; its wooden interior frame was burned. With the help of parents, and the participation of the Lower School students, the Hippo was rebuilt, this time with a more permanent, steel skeleton.” “They prepared a second one that didn't look anything like our original bill. And then they tried to move [it]. This is in the [Among Friends article] when they were building Stokes Hall, and it got damaged on the move. I think what you have now is probably the third iteration or generation of the Hippo,” he said. According to the “Memo to the File,” the Hippo was moved in early 1986 by crane in front of the White Building (before Stokes Hall was built), and again in 1991 to its present location on the other side of the crosswalk.