THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610080496
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARY REID BARROW, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 157 lines
MARGUERITE STANKUS' bird kites fly as one with the wind like no other kites in the world.
Her dove, bald eagle, osprey, Canada goose and loon kites beat their wings, bank and soar as if each were, literally, free as a bird.
To see a Stankus bird kite on the wing at her North Landing River home is to think the creature could fly off down the waterway at any moment. Although tethered to a string, it doesn't fly like a kite and it needs no human to guide it or run to give it a lift. It flies on its own.
As a child, Stankus learned to sail her boat without a rudder, steering only with the sail, and for the past eight years, she has used this innate knowledge of the wind to design Jackites, her line of bird kites that sail with the wind, needing no guide.
``If you know how to sail with only a sail, you know what the wind will do,'' Stankus once said.
Stankus' kites have been giving incredulous delight to kite and bird lovers alike for 8 years now, but this summer her doves soared above Olympic Stadium in Atlanta, giving the whole world a shiver of joy.
She was asked to create a dove kite for the Olympics after animal rights activists protested the tradition of releasing live doves at the event's opening ceremony. Although Stankus' new white Dove of Peace and Love with its silver and gold wing trim is a bit more fanciful than her other bird kites, the dove beats its wings with the best of them.
And on opening night in Atlanta, children marched into the stadium carrying 100 of the kites, attached to fishing pole lines. The birds, fluttering and soaring on high as only Stankus' kites could, blurred the difference between fantasy and reality.
Orders for dove kites have been flying into Jackite ever since and now are exceeding sales of Stankus' first and most popular kite, the osprey. Other than that, not much has changed for the 56-year-old woman. She still lives in her Virginia Beach home where most of the work for each kite is performed as it has been since 1988 when Jackite Inc. took flight.
She now has 12 employees, but most are friends and neighbors who live in this remote area of Pungo where critters, many mosquitoes among them, outnumber people. Son Christopher Stankus and girlfriend Charlotte Skive handle the marketing.
Kites are purchased by a wide range of non-kite-flying folks and institutions, such as hospitals, which use them in patient rehabilitation, or schools, which use them for educational purposes. Even farmers fly seconds of the realistic osprey to keep other birds from marauding their crops.
Jackites can be flown like a traditional kite, but they also will fly by themselves, as a wind sock, attached to a pole in a garden or on a pier. They also are hung indoors as mobiles.
``One woman bought a dove to hang over her child's bed,'' Stankus said.
Jackites are sold in every state in the nation, usually at small kite, gift and nature shops, which often fly a demonstration kite from a pole outside. ``We don't sell to big stores,'' Stankus said, ``because they have to be flown or you don't know what they are.
``Our biggest form of marketing is people seeing them.''
An osprey or a dove kite flies every day outside Cape Henry Hardware on Great Neck Road. This year, the store has asked Stankus to autograph her kites at its Fall Fest from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday.
If Stankus gets a special request in the mail for a signed kite, she charges $150. At Cape Henry Hardware, locals can get an autograph simply by purchasing a kite.
Osprey and dove kites are $19.95 (the same original cost eight years ago) in kit form and $22.99 assembled. The most expensive kite is the eagle. In full color with a 5-foot wing span, it costs $45 assembled at Cape Henry Hardware. Small blue jay and cardinal kites sell for $7.99, in kit form.
A kite has its beginnings right in Stankus' cluttered workroom at home. Son Chris rigs up a light table by resting a large piece of glass on wooden blocks on top of an ordinary table and puts a light under the glass.
A nature lover, Stankus still can't explain exactly how she designs her kites to fly like birds and not kites. ``It's total instinct,'' she said with a smile as bright as a dove's white wings.
``I still can't put it down on paper,'' she added. ``Aeronautical engineers tell me my design is almost perfect. Actually, what I've got to do is sit down and watch that bird fly.''
Stankus is not only the designer but she also does all the accounting for Jackite on a computer in her workroom. A bowl of cat food sits near the computer, and Amber, a sleek gray cat with gold eyes, jumps up on the desk to dine. Two Stankus dogs and a neighbor dog that hangs around during the day will eat Amber's food if it's down on the ground, Stankus explained.
A Risograph, a machine somewhere between a mimeograph and a printer stands against the wall. The old-fashioned looking machine is used to print all the kite directions and shipping tube labels.
Once Stankus completes a kite prototype, the design is printed in ultra-violet ink that won't fade on a fiber know as Tyvek at Teagle & Little in Norfolk. Tyvek is a DuPont fiber that feels like paper but has a tensile strength greater than steel.
Thus fade-proof and very strong, the kites can be flown outside from a pole for months without damage. The eagle has withstood 50-mph winds.
``The dove was still flying after (Hurricane) Bertha,'' Stankus said. ``Nine trees were down on the property, and the dove was still flying. I just couldn't believe it.''
After the kites are printed, son Chris hand carries them to Baltimore, where they are die cut with a plate that has been especially fabricated for each kite design. That way, unassembled kites can be punched out, like paper dolls, from the sheet on which they are printed. Stacks of sheets of die-cut kites are piled in Stankus' garage, which has become the assembly room. Plastic jugs of swivel hooks, red eyes, eye backs and other tiny parts line a shelf.
Directions are stored in the laundry room. The shipping room is housed in a shed outside where cardboard shipping tubes stand at attention surrounding a small work table. ``We're so far behind,'' Stankus said, ``that what we do today goes out tomorrow.''
That means Stankus and company work on 200 to 300 kites a day for tomorrow's shipping, producing more than 100,000 kites a year. The operation may seem home-grown, Stankus said, but most people in the kite industry work this way. ``It's very personalized,'' she said.
Stankus belongs to the 5,000-member American Kitefliers Association. And as one of only a few kite designers in the United States, she's invited as a guest to kite festivals all over the world, most recently in Germany and Italy. ``The kite circuit,'' Stankus calls it.
Stankus, a Rhode Island native, became adept at graphics when she studied at the Rhode Island School of Design. Crafts also were a part of her life during years as a Scout leader and church volunteer in Norfolk, where she and her Navy husband lived before moving to Pungo in 1980. After her husband died in an accident in 1986, she went to work at False Cape State Park, seeking comfort in the nature she loved.
``I just had to turn somewhere,'' Stankus said.
Her first kite flew out of the tragedy. She designed the osprey after watching the big fish hawks out on Back Bay while participating in the park's bird-banding and counting operations. The company, Jackite, was named for Jack Ervin, then False Cape's chief ranger who helped launch her business and who has worked with her off and on since.
``Later we realized the last three letters are the last three in Marguerite,'' she said.
The osprey kite took off, and on its wings the business grew. ``Now, if I could do anything in the world,'' Stankus said, ``this is it.''
Next, she dreams of designing a great blue heron. For years, she has been watching a neighborhood heron fly along the river.
``Every time I see that great blue go by, I want to do it,'' Stankus said. ``I tell him, `Someday, honey, I'm gonna make you fly!' '' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
CHARLIE MEADS/The Virginian-Pilot
Marguerite Stankus holds a Dove of Peace and Love she designed for
the Olympics. Above is her eagle kite.
Photos
CHARLIE MEADS /The Virginian-Pilot
Mario Minervini shows off one of Marguerite Stankus' Loon kites with
48-inch wingspan.
Mike Springer starts the process of assembling an Osprey kite by
folding its wings at Jackite Inc. in Virginia Beach.
Graphic
SEE FOR YOURSELF
Marguerite Stankus will be signing and selling her kites from
noon to 2 p.m. Saturday at the Cape Henry Hardware Fall Fest at the
store, 1440 Great Neck Road.
KEYWORDS: KITES by CNB