87th annual Zozobra: The lives and deaths of a beloved bogeyman

Born in 1924, he has suffered a fiery demise every year since and remains Santa Fe's equivalent of the bogeyman. A large crowd is expected today to celebrate the 86th birthday (and death) of Zozobra, aka Old Man Gloom, as the Santa Fe Kiwanis presents his annual burning at Fort Marcy Park. The late artist Will Shuster (1893-1969) is credited with giving birth to Zozobra back in 1924, although former New Mexican editor E. Dana Johnson is reportedly the one who named him. For the first two years, the effigy was known as Old Man Groucher. Though he's put on weight and grown some over the years — he was 18 feet tall in 1924; now he's close to 50 feet — not much has changed with Zozobra, whose conflagration precedes the Fiesta de Santa Fe weekend. Zozobra originally burned in an open field somewhere between what is now the Main Library and the current offices of The Santa Fe Reporter, Sena said. There was a fire station nearby at the old City Hall, which reassured everyone. Zozobra moved to Fort Marcy in either 1939 or 1940. Accounts vary, though Shuster, in a 1964 interview, said it was December 1940, because he recalled that it was snowing, and film star Errol Flynn torched the marionette...more