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Contact:        Robin Eldredge  

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If you give a pig a pardon, she will give you a history lesson.

 [Chesapeake, Virginia] It isn’t often that a children’s book can revise history, but that’s what happened with the recently released Pardon Me. It’s Ham, Not Turkey and the ensuing Pig Pardon ’07 Campaign, which resulted in President George W. Bush altering his schedule by giving his annual Thanksgiving address at Virginia’s Berkeley Plantation, now recognized as the true site of the first Thanksgiving celebrated by English colonists.

On March 1 (National Pig Day 2007), author Lisa Suhay, mother of four, and boutique press Bumble Bee Productions of Chesapeake, Virginia, brought history and children’s literature to life with Pig Pardon ’07 and its online petition. The campaign was inspired by Suhay’s eighth book, Pardon Me. It’s Ham, Not Turkey, which raised funds for the Federation of Virginia Food Banks at www.pigpardon.com while serving to restore Virginia’s place in Thanksgiving history.

In the book, a young student learns that the U.S. President pardons a turkey in the White House Rose Garden each Thanksgiving. When the boy discovers that the first celebration really took place in Virginia, where the colonists most likely ate ham, he starts a petition asking the President for a pig pardon, as well.

Pig Pardon ’07 took Ginny, the spotted piglet from Kidwell Farm, and thousands of children on an historic journey of discovery. The kids learned that the first English-speaking day of thanks was not held by Plymouth Pilgrims in 1621, but at Berkeley, Virginia, on December 4, 1619. The Virginia colonists most likely ate a meager meal of ham or bacon from the ship’s stores, not turkey, as popular myth has it in the Massachusetts celebration.

Colonial history got turned around by writer/editor Sarah J. Hale of Boston, who is perhaps best known for “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” She petitioned President Abraham Lincoln to create a national day of thanksgiving. Lincoln likely created the holiday to unite a nation torn by the Civil War. When the South lost, colonial history in Virginia was dismissed as “Southern” history, and the Pilgrims’ event became “fact.”

“I didn’t believe the history at first,” said Suhay, a native New Yorker who moved to Virginia from New Jersey five years ago. “I wanted to show my sons and other children that we are always learning and that when we find a mistake in history we can correct it, no matter who we are or how old we may be.”

Through pig-kissing contests, a mayor on a motorcycle and more than 7,000 signatures, the campaign gained major media attention as well as bipartisan political support, including that of Senator John Warner, Congresswoman Thelma Drake and Congressman J. Randy Forbes, who contacted the White House on the campaign’s behalf.

In the end, Mr. Bush came to Berkeley, visited the Federation of Virginia Food Banks and had a letter of thanks delivered directly from Marine One to the author, praising her efforts to help the food banks and raise awareness about the history of Thanksgiving. (See letter included with this kit). Pig Pardon ’08 begins on March 1 to “Keep History Straight in ‘08.”