‘Groundhog ambassador’ brings East Coast tradition to Camas

When Camas elementary school teacher Julie Savelesky says she’s a “groundhog ambassador,” she’s not hyperbolizing.

Savelesky even has the plaque from the Chamber of Commerce in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania – home of the famed, season-predicting groundhog known as Punxsutawney Phil, “The Great Seer of all Seers”- to prove it.

“Yes, I’m a groundhog ambassador,” Savelesky recently told The Post-Record, breaking into laughter. “I spread the joy of Groundhog Day whenever I can and as often as I can.”

This year, Savelsky, a second-grade teacher at Dorothy Fox Elementary, got her entire school community together to celebrate Groundhog Day on Feb. 2.

“There were lots of lessons leading up to the day,” she says. “We read stories about groundhogs and were writing about them. There were all kinds of arts and crafts and learning facts about groundhogs. The students learned that farmers hate them, but also look to them to see if they should plant their crops.”

Groundhogs are not native to the Pacific Northwest, so Savelsky brings photos and books and videos to help her students understand more about this fascinating, long-hibernating mammal.

This year, the teacher discovered that researchers are even studying groundhogs’ lengthy hibernation cycles – which have been compared to a coma-like state, Savelsky said – to learn more about how science might allow humans traveling through deep space to go into a similar state of hibernation.

“They’re really remarkable mammals,” Savelsky said of the groundhog. “They can move up to 700 pounds of dirt and rock every day. And they’re very clean animals. There are a lot of amazing facts about groundhogs out there.”

And, thanks to Savelsky, many Dorothy Fox students leave second grade equipped to talk groundhogs – and Groundhog Day – with folks who grew up near Punxsutawney (including this reporter) and regularly celebrated Punxsutawney Phil’s sunrise emergence from his burrow on “Gobbler’s Knob” every Feb. 2, to see if he would “predict” six more weeks of East Coast winter or an early spring. This year, at 7:25 a.m. (Eastern Time Zone) on Feb. 2, Punxsutawney Phil “the seer of seers, the prognosticator of all prognosticators,” emerged for the 136th time (legend holds that Phil is gifted with immortality “sustained by drinks of groundhog punch, the elixir of life,” according to Groundhog.org, but most groundhogs live about five years) and, after being placed on top of a stump, cast a long shadow, predicting six more weeks of winter – at least for people living in western and central Pennsylvania.

The Dorothy Fox second-graders had helped decorate their school with groundhog-themed art and posters – and had their own predictions about what Phil might predict about spring or winter weather.

“The kids have so much fun. There’s a lot of laughter,” Savelesky says of the annual celebration inside her Dorothy Fox classroom. “And, this year, we got the whole school involved.”

Being a groundhog ambassador comes naturally to Savelesky. The 48-year-old teacher’s parents, George and Sue Culp, grew up in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and were voted their high school’s 1964 “Groundhog King and Queen.”

Savelskey grew up in Connecticut, but regularly visited her grandparents in Punxsutawney and grew up learning all about groundhogs, Phil and the annual Groundhog Day festivities in the small western Pennsylvania town.

“My grandmother nominated me to be a groundhog ambassador, and the Chamber of Commerce gave me my official certificate in 1995.”

Savelesky took her role seriously – spreading groundhog facts far and wide during her college years in Virginia, grad school days in Portland and, of course, in her teaching jobs in Hawaii and, since 1999, in Camas.

“It’s fun and I love talking about them,” Savelesky says. “This is what my mom did and it’s what I do. I love to have fun with learning, and being a groundhog ambassador allows me to do that.”

Savelesky’s family, which includes her two children – a 10th-grader at Hayes High School and a sixth-grader at Skyridge Middle School – has a Groundhog Day tradition involving the baking of groundhog-shaped cookies, which Savelsky dips in vanilla (for an early spring) and chocolate (to represent the groundhog seeing his shadow and predicting six more weeks of winter weather).

“You make a wish and get a cookie,” Savelesky says. “Depending on how the person eats it determines if their wish comes true.”

The teacher usually shares her special groundhog-shaped cookies with her second-graders and other Dorothy Fox staff, but says the COVID-19 pandemic has temporarily stymied that tradition.

“That’s OK. Maybe next year,” she says of bringing the cookies to her classroom. “It was still so much fun this year. The whole school got involved and we had a huge shindig.”

To learn more about Punxsutawney Phil and Groundhog Day, visit groundhog.org.