Gambier Celebrates 43022 Day

What’s a town to do when the calendar coincides with its assigned zip code? In Gambier, that was a sign to have a celebration to mark the once in a century occurrence which happened on 4-30-22.

Kenyon College and Gambier collaborated to host a 43022 Day party on Middle Path that Saturday morning which included a parade, a planting, a poem and a proclamation.

The college bookstore had offered special shirts and other swag for sale and handed out free vouchers for the food trucks. Gambier gave away unique coffee mugs to the first 250 attendees and printed up commemorative postcards pictures of the Post Office circa 1940.

Councilmember Kaitlin Sockman designed the mugs and planned with Kenyon staff and students for the special day that also kicked off a redesign of downtown green space. Council President Morgan Giles planted a white dogwood tree at the northeast corner of the Post Office – a start of the revamp of the pocket park that lies between the Village Market and Post Office.

Council members Rakia Faber and Alison Furlong took the opportunity to poll residents’ views on “Reimagining Gaskin Ave”, one of the two downtown streets, on how to best include non-motorized traffic along the main artery.

Resident poet Royal Rhodes read the poem he created for the event. And no observance in Gambier would be complete without a proclamation from Mayor Leeman Kessler.

And with that, the parade stepped off and concluded the day’s scheduled events but villagers stayed downtown for food and fellowship for what most celebrants will witness once-in-a-lifetime: The day my Zip code and calendar were the same.