Kids see dinosaurs up close in Wellman

By Molly Roberts
Posted 7/5/22

Cardboard, hot glue and paper mâché: that’s all you need to build a dinosaur. Well, not quite, but that’s what Doug Campbell started with when building the 10-foot-tall …

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Kids see dinosaurs up close in Wellman

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Cardboard, hot glue and paper mâché: that’s all you need to build a dinosaur. Well, not quite, but that’s what Doug Campbell started with when building the 10-foot-tall animatronic T-rex that was on display at the Dino-Ventures event in the Wellman Parkside Activity Center on Monday, July 4.

Campbell, along with friends Justin Schmid and Derek Workman, built the T-rex at home, and eventually had to transfer the dinosaur to his son’s garage that was big enough to house the 10-foot beast.

Campbell had never built anything like the dinosaur before, but said he learned a lot of what he needed to know by watching YouTube videos and collaborating with his friends. All because he just wanted to give the kids of the Wellman area something fun to do on the Fourth of July. Proceeds went to the Wellman-Scofield Public Library, which helped run the event.

“I have 23 grandkids,” Campbell said. “Last year, a bunch of us went up to North Park [for the 4th of July] and in an hour, we were done. There wasn’t much to do. I just thought we needed to do something for the kids.”

The Dino-Ventures event featured many unique activities for kids of all ages. There were matching games, where kids had to match the dinosaur skull to a photo of the whole dinosaur, as well as opportunities to build dinosaur skeletons out of foam bones. Kids could even dig through a sandbox for their very own fossil to take home — and volunteers were standing by to help the kids identify the fossils they found. A virtual reality booth gave kids the experience of traveling through prehistoric times and seeing dinosaurs. The kids could earn prizes in a variety of different games.

“We wanted to have different activities for kids of all ages,” Campbell said. “We wanted to have something for everyone.”

“I have my own kids and try to keep them off electronics,” Schmid said. “It’s nice to come up with stuff they can do with their parents or other kids, fun stuff to do that keeps them off their electronics for a little while.”

The finale of the event, after traversing a maze that brought families into another room, was seeing the giant T-rex, which moved and roared and looked shockingly lifelike. Also in the room were climbable dinosaurs and a volcano slide, giving kids the chance to crawl all over different dinosaurs they had learned about in earlier parts of the exhibit.

Even Campbell’s grandkids, who have seen the T-rex through its many stages of construction, were enchanted by the finished product.

“My grandson Foster, who is a little over two… he knows it’s not real, but he was standing near it and when it started moving and growling and looking around, his eyes got big and he just stiffened and backed up,” Campbell said. “My intent isn’t to scare kids, but I do want them to get a thrill out of it.”

Campbell said he has future plans to build more dinosaurs, including a Dilophosaurus “spitter”, and to further animate the T-rex.

“I think next year we’ll animate him some more, make him slide back and forth,” Campbell said. “So not only will he be back there growling, all of a sudden he’s going to come to the front, hit the gate and drop down while he’s roaring.”

Campbell said he plans to store the T-rex at the library so his daughter, Erin Campbell, Director of the Wellman-Scofield Public Library, can use the dinosaur during storytime and other library events.

When I remarked to Campbell that he was a dinosaur expert now, he simply said, “No, I’ve just got a kid’s brain.”

“Everything around us started out as a thought, every single thing,” Campbell said. “Let your thoughts go, and let your imagination take over. If you’ve got a thought or an idea, just do a little research here and there and you’d be surprised what you can come up with.”