Recovered bollard buddies will be returned to beach

Fourteen “bollard buddies” reportedly taken from their beach posts over the weekend are back in good hands after the person who took them apparently had a change of heart.

“I’m over the moon happy,” said Diana Vondra, a Port Aransas resident who organized the effort that put more than 300 of the hand-crocheted and knitted creations on wooden posts at I.B. Magee Jr. Beach Park in December.

Vondra made appeals for the return of the bollard buddies through the South Jetty and other area media.

Then, on the afternoon of Tuesday, Jan. 31, she got a call from someone at the Port Aransas Art Center.

The person said “that two young people came in and said their friend had realized his mistake and that he wanted to do the right thing and turn them in,” Vondra said. “No names were mentioned.”

All 14 of the buddies were returned, and all were in good shape, she said.

This year is the seventh winter of the bollard buddies effort, and there has never been another incident when this many of the handcraft creations have been missing.

“This is this is dreadful,” Vondra told the South Jetty before the buddies were returned. “There are people who had brought bollard buddies that they made all the way from Canada. They obviously went through and hand-picked exactly which ones they wanted.”

Some of the missing bollard buddies included creations resembling Batman, Elvis, Bob Marley, a Harry Potter Minion, a “Lonestar Armadillo,” Willie Nelson, a Minnesota Viking and a Canadian Mountie.

Through the South Jetty and other media, Vondra suggested that the person who took them return the buddies by dropping them off at the Port Aransas Art Center or a couple of other specific places in town.

“I am assuming the people who took the buddies do not know how to knit or crochet,” she wrote in her letter to the editor. “Therefore, they have no idea of the amount of work and time that went into the creation of each of these unique one of a kind works of art.”

Vondra said her “worst fear” was that the buddies would be discarded or destroyed.

“The whole idea behind this project is to bring smiles to the folks who visit our beach,” she wrote in her letter. “You have taken that away from the folks who created them and the folks who will never see them because you decided to remove them.”

Vondra said she did not report the bollard buddies incident to local law enforcement.

“Each and every person who makes them understands that there is the possibility that something could happen to them,” she said. “We accept that. But when someone comes along and takes as many as they did, what are you going to do?”

Contact Kathryn Cargo at reporter@portasouthjetty.com.