With a fresh batch of snow blanketing the campus, the timing couldn’t have been better.
Braving the frigid temperatures and biting wind, St. Michael's college senior Gatien Gaujac, and five friends, worked steadily into the early morning hours last Wednesday outside of the president’s office in Founders Hall, creating a tribute to the soon-to-be former president of St. Michael’s, Marc vanderHeyden wouldn’t soon forget.
“It was fabulous. To me it was sort of like the best Valentine card you could dream of,” vanderHeyden says. “Except I didn’t know who had done it and that made it even more pleasant.”
Senior Gatien Gaujac, along with friends, spent two hours in the cold building the snowmen.
(photo, Rachel Haven)
Starting at 11 p.m. on Tuesday Feb. 20, Gaujac and his friends lined the walkway to the president’s office with a combination of miniature and full-sized snowmen, many of them with signs attached to their twiggy arms that said things like, “Don’t go,” and “We’ll miss you.”
“He’s leaving at the same time as the class of 2007, so I felt like the class of 2007 should do something for Marc,” Gaujac says. “He’s done a lot for the college and we just wanted to express that we appreciate what he’s done.”
Gaujac got his inspiration for the unique tribute from a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip he once read.
“In the comic strip, it’s just a bunch of mini snowmen arranged sort of like an army," he said. "So we decided to give President VanderHeyden a vanguard as he entered his office in the morning.”
Kevin Labresh, also a senior, took part in building the tribute.
“Gatien just came in and said ‘Hey, want to help me build a snowman army?’ and I’m like, ‘Hey sure, why not,’” Labresh says with a chuckle. “It seemed like it’d be a fun thing to do — something that people would notice and hopefully get a kick out of.”
In an unlucky turn of events, Gaujac discovered, after building the tribute, that the president was away in Florida and wouldn’t be returning until that night. Although it may not have been the way Gaujac pictured it, vanderHeyden did get to see the snowman vanguard.
“I came to my office on Thursday evening and I found them all there,” vanderHeyden says. “It was dark so I left the door open so that I could have a good look at them. It was beautiful.”
vanderHeyden took photos of the snowmen the next morning. He was happy to hear that his staff had also taken photos, because by the time he got to them, the tribute had already started to melt away.
Lisa Powlison, assistant to the president, was one of the first people to see the army of snowmen.
“It just made you smile,” she says. “It was really very unique and it made you want to laugh it was so cute.”
The staff in the president’s office were so impressed by the snowmen that they called representatives from the St. Michael’s public relations office to come over and take photos.
President vanderHeyden says he’s never received such a special tribute.
“It’s so imaginative and it’s so Vermont. I love it,” he says.
As for the students who stayed up late into the night to build the snowmen, vanderHeyden has just one message.
“I‘ll tell them that I will be happy to hug them if they are still cold,” he says.
