Over the past few years, various patch orders have been popping up at Stadri Emblems, all containing a mysterious opossum, arrayed in different themes and dress. He quickly became a curiosity to many of the staff, so we set out to learn more about this mysterious creature. It turns out his name is Wally, and he represents the Woapink Lodges. Wanting to satisfy our curiosity further, we asked one of the Lodge members for even more background information.
“As far as history goes we have had Wally as a mascot for many years. Our Lodge name Woapink translates to possum in Lenne Lenape, so we have used a possum on logos and lodge flaps, t-shirts, etc, for a long time. Our first actual lodge flap featured a possum. Over the years he gained the name Wally Woapink. There used to be a puppet that was used as a mascot; then a few companies had toys that were possums that we would take around to events, etc.
In about 2009, we made a full size "Mascot Type" costume of a possum that we take to events and NOACs.
Someone came up with the idea for the original hanging patch that was just for fun. The patch series we have been doing started with the idea of having Wally in a different outfit representing the four seasons or basically our events. We have continued to use Wally for our event patches and just keep coming up with ideas to change it up and keep it fresh."
How about you? Have you ever seen Wally patches? Do you have any of your own in your personal collection? More important, do you know anything about Wally that we don't? We'd love to know! Please leave a comment.
