In bits and pieces, the Dinos and Dragons interactive exhibit arrives in New Port Richey

BY MICHELE MILLER
What’s What New Port Richey

Nov. 14, 2022

About those dinosaurs, dragons, and the assorted parts of each that have been piling up in the sports field adjacent to Schwettman Education Center on Grand Boulevard and Gulf Drive.

Maybe you’ve seen them while driving by, or perhaps saw something in the news about the recent theft and subsequent recovery of an 8-foot-long, 80-pound animatronic baby velociraptor worth $6,000. Now safely back at its temporary home, the velociraptor is one of 100 life-size prehistoric and fantastical creatures to be on display during the upcoming Dinos and Dragons exhibit, to be held Dec. 9, 2022-Feb. 26, 2023 on the Pasco County school campus.

The dino deliveries, dropped over time by 12 semis, have been a point of curiosity for many, such as sisters, Dana Pierse and Paula Hall, who stopped in a while back on a Sunday afternoon to inquire.

“We saw they were dumping dinosaurs so we asked, “What are you doing?” said Dana, who ended up signing on as a “sewing volunteer” with her sister.

“Really, when are we going to get a chance to do something like this again,” she said, as the two stitched parts of foam and dinosaur “skin” that had been damaged in transit.

“It’s amazing. Absolutely amazing – a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” Hall said.

The exhibition will be held from 4-9 p.m., Tuesdays through Sundays on the campus of Harry Schwettman Education Center in New Port Richey and is presented by the Museum of Archaeology, Paleontology, and Science (M.A.P.S.), title sponsor Friendly KIA and other local sponsors.

Several volunteers under the direction of Charles Zidar, executive director of M.A.P.S, and longtime collaborator, Kirsty Forgie, are ramping up efforts to get the exhibit set up despite setbacks due to the windy effects and some damage caused by Hurricane Ivan and Nicole. They’ve also had some help in offloading from the local charity Farrell Cares.

“Some have been damaged in transport. We stitch it all up and make it look like new,” said Forgie, a “doctor of dinosaurs” of sorts, who has been tending to the traveling exhibit for three or four years.

The Dinos and Dragons exhibit is a first-of-its-kind event for New Port Richey and a way to bring attention to and raise funds for a permanent location for M.A.P.S., which is presently housed in a former band room at Wendell Krinn Technical High School.

“We’re expecting about 60,000 visitors,” said Richard Melton, chair of the New Port Richey Cultural Committee.

He is an enthusiastic supporter of M.A.P.S. and was an integral player in bringing the museum to New Port Richey and forging a relationship with Pasco County Schools after reading a story about Zidar’s search for a home for his extensive collection of artifacts in a feature story in the Tampa Bay Times.

The idea is to put M.A.P.S. on the map in a way that will make the museum more accessible to the community and in particular local schoolchildren, said Melton, while taking a break from pushing a lawn mower at Schwettman as high school student volunteers helped unload the latest delivery.

M.A.P.S. presently hosts by-appointment tours on Sundays as well as summer camps and birthday parties. It is also a site for PEACE summer camps hosted by Pasco County schools.

Setting up an ideal public exhibit is tough to do in its current space, said Zidar, who 20 years ago helped amass and later acquired some 6,000 artifacts worth $3 million that were once part of a natural history museum in Dania Beach.

The museum is bursting at the seams so much that most artifacts are kept in storage behind locked doors in temperature-controlled rooms, which is why tours have been kept at smaller numbers.

“These collections are kind of old-school – donated by families – and have been in the country for 50-60 years,” he said. “This is like the Smithsonian or the Field Museum. These collections don’t happen anymore.”

“The original museum was 50,000 square feet and we’re in 5,000 square feet,” Zidar said, noting that the Schwettman Education Center would make a good fit for a natural history museum.

Making those artifacts and the museum more accessible to local kids and their families is a primary reason why volunteers, such as Donna Hoague and Brianna Letendre, show up on a regular basis to volunteer both at M.A.P.S. and at Schwettman.

“I can’t wait to see this up because all I’ve seen so far are these body parts strewn across a field,” Hoague said as she stitched up part of a dragon under the shade of a Carnotaurus. “They have to be glued, sewed, then painted. It’s quite a process. Definitely a labor of love.”

Hoague is a teacher of 34 years, with the last 19 spent as an educator developing curriculum and leading fourth-grade students and their teachers at one-day field trips at the Pasco Schools Energy and Marine Center in Port Richey. She also is a coordinator and teacher for Pasco Schools summer PEACE Camps held in 2021 and 2022 at the M.A.P.S. museum, something she pushed for after visiting the museum for the first time.

“It’s hard not to fall in love with the museum and Charles’ passion,” said Hoague, who signed on as a volunteer after seeing how it could benefit Pasco County students.

“I wanted to see our students involved in the museum and thought it would engage them,” she said, listing field activities students participated in during summer camps such as “jacketing a bone,” using special brushes and other tools to unearth fossils in a dig plate, learning about body systems at a dinosaur dissection unit, and learning through hands-on lessons about the layers of the Earth. “It’s an amazing thing to watch them. These are fields that you can still go into. Just look at all the discoveries that are happening.”

Letendre, a student at Pasco Hernando State College volunteers regularly at the museum in helping to catalog the pre-Columbian artifacts.

“The museum is really impressive and there are such wonderful things that really need to be in a display case,” she said.

Lakewood High student, Elijah McNew, a regular volunteer at M.A.P.S considers himself fortunate to have already experienced some of what the museum offers.

“It’s quite an opportunity,” said Elijah, who makes the trek from St. Petersburg each Sunday to rack up volunteer hours for Florida’s Bright Future Scholarship program. “At the museum, you can actually hold artifacts in your hands – priceless things. And it’s right up my alley because my dream job when I was a kid was to be a paleontologist.”

Those who attend the Dinos and Dragons exhibit will have the opportunity to partake in educational adventures while getting a close-up look at some lifesize, animatronic dinosaurs.

When all the dinosaurs and dragons are placed, a pathway will be carved through the tall grass that will present a more natural habitat for the prehistoric creatures – even though dinosaurs never roamed these parts because Florida was underwater back then.

And maybe, just maybe, some of those kids and their families will make it a point to visit the museum – ideally one day in a bigger space, Melton said, adding that in-county school field trips figure into future plans.

“We want to reach kids that have never been to a museum. Kids that would never have the chance to hold an artifact,” he said. “We have lots of work to do, but we’re going to get there.”

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IF YOU GO

• Want to support M.A.P.S. by “adopting” a dinosaur? Check out sponsorship packages here.

• Visit M.A.P.S. at Wendell Krin Technical High. Docent tours are given by appointment from 3-5 p.m. each Sunday. For more information or to schedule a tour, click here.

• Special note: Get a sneak peek and meet Charles Zidar at the New Port Richey Rec’s free Movie in the Park event at 6 p.m. Nov. 19 in Sims Park in downtown New Port Richey.
• Volunteer opportunities are available for community members and high school students seeking to fulfill scholarship volunteer hours requirements. For information on the M.A.P.S.website, click here.

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