Bob Richmond's 1941 Teddy Bear

appeared under the Christmas tree in 1941 (Bob's third Christmas, about two weeks after Pearl Harbor) in Littleton MA, near where Bob's father (Albert Marion Richmond, 1906-1993) was stationed at Fort Devens, and made himself at home rather rapidly, and has been around ever since. Bob's mother (Alice Evelyn Southwick Richmond, 1906-1981, who commonly used the word to mean "face") was not easily convinced that his name really was

(accented on the word "White") but that's his name. He's a lot smarter than your average bear.

lives with Bob in Knoxville, Tennessee.

is learning HTML. He wrote this Web page to try to find out where he was born. Can any of you teddy bear experts out there help him?

is about 22 inches (59 cm) tall and is assembled out of panels of plush fur hand-sewn with overcast stitches, with a midline front seam and no back seam. His original eyes, seen in the black and white photo below, were celluloid with movable pupils. His nose embroidery is original, or an exact duplicate. His limbs are short, with shoulder and hip joints, without claws or special pad fabrics. (He dictates all that HTML to Bob).

In 1947

underwent a midline anterior arctotomy with thoracoabdominal arctoplasty and transcervical rhinoplasty ("I'm nobody's rhinozzlewurst" he protests). The midabdominal suture line was opened with sewing scissors. The original kapok stuffing was found to be much compressed, and was augmented with cotton rags and batting. Exploration of the head revealed wood wool (Excelsior) stuffing ("horse feathers!" says

) not extending into the nose, which was packed with cotton rags. A non-functional "squeaker" was probably left in situ, though radioarctography would be needed to confirm this. The abdominal incision was closed with cotton overcast sutures. The patient withstood the procedure well, and immediately returned to play.
[teddy bear with bob.]

Surgeon: Della Beryl Durham Richmond (1887-1979, Bob's grandmother).
First Assistant: Bob Richmond (who allegedly grew up to be a pathologist). [teddy bear 1942.]

Bob and

were both a lot younger when Bob's father took this old black and white photo in 1942, than they were when Bob took another picture of the dynamic duo in 1999.
[jane's teddy bear.]

has a younger brother of similar size who turned up under the Christmas tree in 1942 and was also named

, who after living incognito in a garage in Los Angeles for twenty years turned up in 2002. He's likely to be a Gund bear too.

Another

lives with Bob's grandchildren. He's a second generation

, having started out with Bob's oldest daughters Sarah and Kathy. He's a little shy about having his picture taken.

[miranda's teddy bear.]

Still another

is now at Harvard with his youngest daughter Miranda - here he's wearing a purple scarf a friend of Miranda's knitted. He was born in North Carolina about 1980.

hangs out online with his friend Eddy Bear

The The Bear Museum, about fifty miles south of London in Petersfield UK, replied (about the original 1941

) on October 28th, 1999:

is certainly a bit of a character - we hope you take care of him properly - perhaps some clothes would be in order to protect his poor threadbare body?

Anyway, our best guess at his identity is that he might be a Gund bear. The Gund firm have been going since 1896, but their 1940s/50s bears have a strong similarity to

. We've got a panda in our collection with very similarly shaped ears and most significantly, those big round paw pads we can see in the old photo of you both in younger days! The fact he's unjointed and has those unusually shaped limbs seems quite persuasive, although we couldn't be 100% sure.

Although we can't find a picture of a bear exactly like

, there are a couple of similar Gund bears in The Teddy Bear Encyclopedia by Pauline Cockrill (pub. Dorling Kindersley). Now you have an idea what to look for, you could probably go back to other books and look for Gund bears of the right period.

Hope this helps, and best wishes to you and

!

All @ The Bear Museum

Note from the Webmaster (that's Bob): The Artist Formerly Known As

? Nope. "Net Nanny" type programs don't like the string

for reasons we're not going into on a family oriented Web site. Embedded in a small graphic, the name is concealed from search engines and parsers.

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       Return to Bob Richmond's site map.

Posted to the Web
       October 14th, 1999
Page updated
       July 7th, 2006