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Kite Personalities - Kay & Jim Buesing |
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How did the World Kite Museum and Hall of Fame in Long Beach, Washington, come into being and grow to its present eminence? It's a story of small developments piled one on top of the other—a step by step process whose sum is significantly greater than its parts—driven by the dedication of an unusual couple. Kay Buesing, director of the museum, and husband Jim, right hand man, were born and raised in Wisconsin but moved west to Washington state for employment and, in Kay's case, a master's degree in English and theater at Central Washington State. Owners of a vacation cottage in Long Beach, it was natural for Kay to buy Jim a kite one Christmas in the 1970s. He took the gift two-line SpyroGyro out on the beach and mastered its complexities so easily he bought a state of the art Steve Edeiken Rainbow stunter the following day. He was hooked. "I loved the feeling of control and the neat maneuvers there on the beach with the wind blowing and the surf crashing. If you have troubles, you forget them. All you can think about is flying the kite. It's wonderful." Kay was shortly bitten by the kite bug too, as the couple discovered well-stocked kite stores in Seattle and Portland. At the Fort Worden kitemaking workshop in 1983, she made her first kite, a classic Cody. "It was hard for me to make, but it flew," she says. "Who would imagine I could do it? I had never taken sewing. I was so excited." Becoming friendly with Portland kite store owner Grant Radden, Jim and Kay joined him in setting up the first kite store at Long Beach in 1984, where the Buesings by now lived after moving from Yakima (Jim had become local supervisor for the state social and health service). Long Beach is literally that-a strip of soft sand more than a football field deep and 27 miles long. It has a relatively mild climate, steady winds off the Pacific, and swarms of vacationers with lots of time on their hands for play. The Buesings soon bought Radden out. Of their enterprise Kay Buesing commented: "It was more of a lucrative hobby than business. It provided us with money to travel to kite festivals in Japan and China and elsewhere. It permitted us to indulge ourselves." Very much linked to the Buesings' kite interest was the August kite festival at Long Beach, an astonishingly successful promotion to lure tourist dollars to the resort. The first one in 1982 drew seven kitefliers; now the Washington State International Kite Festival attracts international guest fliers and thousands of spectators to events spread throughout a full week. Using Jim's expertise in obtaining grants, the festival early on obtained money to bring in foreign stars, such as Peter Lynn of New Zealand, Shakib Gunn of Singapore and Martin Lester of England. Subsidized at first, the festival now makes money through the sale of posters, tee-shirts, patches, kite pins and concession rentals. Area merchants love every minute of the action. As one spin-off of the festival, the resourceful Buesings set up a nonprofit foundation, received free city office space and organized an exhibition on the history of kites in the state, which was shown for a week in Long Beach City Hall in 1989. Some of the memorabilia was surprising-an account of a Russian explorer flying a kite for resident Indians, a photograph of a Chinese with classic centipede kite aloft. When a kite magazine staged a contest to determine what American city was the kite capital of the country, Jim Buesing's imagination was stirred and he conceived an unbeatable response for the future—an international museum devoted to kites. An employee contributed the idea of an alcove devoted to major historical figures. The World Kite Museum and Hall of Fame was born. "Setting up the museum was a thing that needed to be done," says Jim, simply. "A lot of people have said to me since, 'Why didn't we think of doing it ourselves?'" The museum almost immediately had two windfalls. Dorothea Checkley of Seattle, widow of kite pioneer Dave Checkley, pledged the institution her late husband's massive collection of seven hundred Japanese, Chinese, and Malaysian kites. Meanwhile, the city was willed a motel complex and happily remodeled one of the buildings for the museum, granting free rent and electricity. The museum was an idea whose time had come. For its first year of operation in 1990, the museum showed the cream of its Japanese kites. Twelve Japanese were brought over to demonstrate their country's rich kite flying tradition. In 1991, the Checkley Chinese kites had their turn. In 1992, the museum staged an exhibition illustrating the history of Western kites. Professional trappings grow by the year. They now embrace a varied and growing collection (now 1500 kites), museum shop, library, newsletter, archives. Educational programs such as workshops and lectures are emphasized: the Museum annually hosts six weekend hands-on workshops. Programs for school children and for retirees continue to expand. Educational publications to spread the word about kiting and not incidentally to raise funds are issued on a regular basis. And the Museum is closing in on an ambitious goal, to raise the money to purchase an existing two-story building. At the same time, the Hall of Fame alcove adds to its list of honorees, which so far range from the unknown person who first flew a kite in China, birthplace of the kite, to the Smithsonian's Paul Garber, from Anglo-Australian Lawrence Hargrave, inventor of the boxkite, to Floridian Dom Jalbert, inventor of the parafoil. Famous names in the field, and some lesser-knowns, continue to be added year by year. Kay Buesing sums up her labor of love experience at the museum: "You plug and plug and it begins to bloom. It's almost compelling to make the museum function well. For me, it's almost a disease—not crippling but rather rejuvenating." Note:
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