Mermaid Society SMTX to expand statewide

Mermaid Society SMTX and its annual festival are heading into their third year. Since their inception in 2016, the organization has grown like a ripple in a lake, starting in small concentric rings and expanding outwards to a growing community of businesses, organizations, artists and residents that have found common ground in either protecting the San Marcos River, participating in the culture and the arts or preserving the history.

But how did the idea to revive the mermaid, a relic of San Marcos’ past and the former Aquarena Springs Amusement Park at Spring Lake, the “original home of the San Marcos Mermaids.”

According to July Moreno, founder of Mermaid Society SMTX, the wheels for the organization and citywide festival were set into motion years before the festivities ever came to fruition.

In 2011, Moreno made the decision to move back to San Marcos after receiving news from her sister, Joanna Moreno, that she was ill and needed help. Moreno decided to quit her job in San Antonio in order to move back to her hometown and provide daily care for her sister who was battling diabetes. Moreno found herself with a lot of time for reflection in between waiting rooms and extended hospital stays.

“You know when you are sitting in doctors offices and sitting overnight in hospitals, it gives you a lot of time to think,” Moreno said. “And when I first moved back to San Marcos I didn’t have connections, it all felt very new and I felt disconnected with what was my home. And I started to – because I needed to in order to save my sanity – connect. I got involved with art organizations and the art movement here.”

And when Moreno began meeting the people in her hometown community again, she realized a lot of them had just moved here and that a lot of them had never heard about Aquarena Springs Amusement Park, Aquamaids, Ralph the swimming pig or any of it. Moreno, had grown up spending summers on the San Marcos River and watching the graceful Aquamaids at the the Aquarena Springs Amusement Park perform in the underwater theatre.

The last vestiges of the park and resort were removed in 2012 when they hoisted the 467-ton underwater theatre from the San Marcos River Headwaters in an effort to restore the historic area – that remains, according to fossil records, to be one of the oldest continually inhabited locations on the continent, as well as the second-largest artesian springs in the western United States – to its original, pristine condition. The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment now sit there and are an important research and stewardship resource for the San Marcos River.

But the lack of connection between San Marcos’ past and its future generations made Moreno start seeing mermaids. She wanted to revive at least part of that history, and culture and it started with the idea of a mermaid statue.

“It kind of started with that spark of it would be so great to see the status of the mermaid come back and the image that I had was of the original Aquarena Springs mermaid statue with flowing hair and she’s sitting on a block.”

Moreno started jotting her ideas down on paper, but those ideas continued to grow in a ripple effect – she saw the potential for a citywide celebration. She would share these ideas with her sister and her sister believed in her ideas with enthusiastic support. But in March of 2013, Moreno’s sister passed away. After that, Moreno firmly resolved to live life more purposefully.

“All of this was born out of this idea that instead of me going back to corporate America, I had to make the decision to go my path, because life is too short,” Moreno said. “I saw, before my eyes, someone who was a vibrant and energetic and a beautiful person, that had life ahead of her, pass. It was at that crossroad that I decided that I want to take this risk, I want to try it.”

Several months after her sister’s passing, Moreno started pulling out her notes and doodles of mermaids and scribbles of plans for a mermaid statue, like the one Aquarena Springs once had, and began drafting the idea of a mermaid festival.

“As crazy as my idea was, it also felt kind of timely,” Moreno said. “We were a town without a celebration. We once had the Chilympiad and Cinco de Mayo, but we really didn’t have an event that we said, as a city, that we’re celebrating anymore.”

Kamryn Harvay of Gonzales traveled all the way to San Marcos to get a close view of the Mermaid Promenade. Daily record photo by Colton Ashabranner

In 2015, Moreno started to test the waters by throwing her idea out to others in the community to see what the reaction would be.

“It was a really scary time,” Moreno said. “I felt incredibly vulnerable because I had this really big idea and I believed it. I was living, thinking, eating and breathing this idea everyday, but once it came out I feared that maybe it wouldn’t be good, maybe people wouldn’t support me and it would fail. And so I had to commit to it more than I would a hobby, I had to commit to it like a career, I had to commit to it like I was getting paid, but I wasn’t.”

By 2016 Moreno was ready, and without a committee, a board, or a devoted group of volunteers, she started planning the inaugural Mermaid Society SMTX Festival that June, in only four months time.

She started seeking support from businesses and residents in the community. Chuck Nash San Marcos, Tanger Outlets and Main Street San Marcos were some of the first sponsors to sign on. And members of the community like Shirley Rogers, Fraye Stokes and Ruben and Monica Becerra put up $5,000 each to provide seed dollars for the 2016 festival. They also received support from the city’s Hotel Occupancy Tax funds that are used to support and promote tourism in the city. And all the rest of the funds were fundraised.

Volunteer committees formed and community members like Rio Claro Studios artist Gigi Mederos, Angela Zumwalt and Marieta Hutchison volunteered their time, talent and resources to the Mermaid Society. And in September of 2016 the Mermaid Society of SMTX launched the first SPLASH Festival – SPLASH meaning Stewardship, Preservation, Local, Arts, Sustainability and Heritage. Tickets sold out for the first Mermaid Society Art Ball and the community latched onto the idea of reviving the mermaid.

If 2016 was the year of putting the festival on the map, 2017 was the year of concreting ideas and launching programs.

In 2017, Mermaid Society launched their youth initiatives with the SPLASH Patch Program – that works in collaboration with Girl Scout leadership in the surrounding areas to teach river and community stewardship – and The Mermaid Chat Program, that introduces children ages 5-11 to the history, ecology and importance of the river and how to become river guardians. And even though the Mermaid Society SMTX’s SPLASH Festival only consisted of seven events last year, there were over 30 events across the city that were inspired by the festival. Businesses used the mermaid as a way to promote, selling mermaid wear, toys, jewelry, or hosting mermaid crown-building workshops and art workshops.

But 2018, according to Moreno, is the year for putting a fire in the belly of the organization, for growing and for collaboration. And the growth and collaboration has already started.

The beginning of 2018, they launched the The Stories of San Marcos every Wednesday morning at the Root Cellar Bakery. The Stories of San Marcos is a collaboration with the Lifelong Learning Organization of San Marcos to debut a storytelling speaker series about San Marcos' history, culture and origins. Community leaders of the Indigenous Cultures Institute, the Heritage Association of San Marcos, Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos, the Calaboose African American Museum and Ron Coley, author of "Fountains of St. Mark” tell rarelyheard stories of San Marcos’ past.

2016 King of Splash Chris Rue, Founder July Moreno and Mermaid Queen Shirley Rogers. Daily Record photo by Denise Cathey

And now Moreno is launching the Mermaid Society of Texas, the statewide expansion of the organization that will be headquartered in San Marcos. Three cities – Houston, Plano and Austin – are looking to launch mermaid societies of their own that would work to encourage community and environmental stewardship in their individual communities.

“My hope is that each chapter takes the vision of mermaid society and brings it to their individual community and they use that as a basis to create and connect their communities around the protection of rivers, lakes, waterways or green spaces. And once a year we can convene during the SPLASH Festival in San Marcos to discuss some of the challenges and the successes their communities are facing.

“There is no other city that can make the claim to the mermaid like we can with our past and our river,” Moreno said. “But we can grow our community and we can grow the idea of the mermaid, the idea of community stewardship and environmental stewardship. Our vision is far and wide.”

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has also recognized the Mermaid Society’s SPLASH Patch program, looking to invest in its growth with a collaborative grant between the Mermaid Society SMTX, the San Marcos River Foundation and the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment.

And The Girl Scouts of Central Texas have also started featuring the SPLASH Patch as a badge to earn on their website since May.

The two weeks worth of events that Mermaid Society will host in September haven’t grown from the original seven events - three community symposiums, the Mermaid Society Art Ball, the Downtown Mermaid Promenade and the Mermaid Aqua Faire – but the awareness and anticipation for the events have grown in 2018.

The Arts & Culture Symposium will be held Tuesday, Sept. 11 from 6 - 9 p.m.; the River Guardianship Symposium will be on Wednesday, Sept. 12 from 4:30 - 7:30 p.m. and the Creativepreneur Symposium will be held on Thursday, Sept. 13 from 6 - 9 p.m. at the San Marcos Activity Center. All symposiums will be held at the San Marcos Activity Center, 501 E. Hopkins St.

The Mer-tini Shakedown Competition – held Saturday, Sept. 15 – is also returning this year with Dripping Springs Vodka as the title sponsor. Up to 20 local mixologists and bartenders, representing some of San Marcos’ best eating and drinking establishments will compete to create the best Mermaidinspired Martini or Mer-tini using gin or vodka. The evening ends with two semifinalists who will go to the Shakedown Finals held on the rooftop of the Meadows Center during the Mermaid Society Art Ball.

The premiere event of the SPLASH Festival is the Mermaid Society Art Ball. This private gala event will bring the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment – the historic grounds of the Aquarena Springs Amusement Park, the original home of the Aquamaids and home to the headwaters of the San Marcos River – to life with starry rooftop views, sunset glass bottom boat cruises, live music, dancing, dining, cocktails, live art performances and more. The Mermaid Society Art Ball is scheduled for Friday, Sept. 21 from 7 – 11:30 p.m.

Angela Zumwalt, or “Maya The Mermaid” was stationed in front of the Meadow’s Center for last year’s Mermaid Art Ball. Daily Record photo by Colton Ashabranner

Following the Mermaid Society Art Ball the next morning is the Downtown Mermaid Promenade Saturday, Sept. 22, 10 a.m. to noon. Austin Samba and Las Monas de San Antonio will lead the parade through downtown streets with dance, movement, color and fantastical giant mermaid puppets. The promenade will also highlight this year’s Mermaid Society SMTX honorees representing the arts, river guardianship, and heritage of San Marcos. The fun continues at the Mermaid Aqua Faire immediately following the parade at the San Marcos Main Park Plaza from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. The Mermaid Aqua Faire is a free community festival of art, live music, food, and fun. More information about the 2018 SPLASH Festival is available on the Mermiad Society website.

“I titled the organization Mermaid Society because at the time I felt there was an emerging of a new society happening in San Marcos;” Moreno said, “students that were graduating from the university and deciding to make San Marcos their home, folks moving from bigger cities to settle here and those of us who have called San Marcos home since birth. I felt we needed something that we could all identify with – the Mermaid