With Dogged Determination, a Great Dane Launched Phoenixville’s Popular Firebird Festival

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man in sweater lifting his hand
Image via Tyger Williams, Philadelphia Inquirer.
Henrik Stubbe Teglbjaerg.

Each December in Phoenixville, as a culmination of the annual Firebird Festival, a 25-foot wooden phoenix is set aflame, writes Stephanie Farr for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The organizer behind that event — and the construction manager of its signature wooden bird — is Henrik Stubbe Teglbjaerg, who arrived in the U.S. from Denmark in 1989.

In 2004, together with four other Phoenixville residents, Stubbe Teglbjaerg came up with the novel idea of creating a festival that would culminate with a bonfire to celebrate the borough’s mythical namesake.

He envisioned the spectacle as a celebration of Phoenixville’s burgeoning renewal, which he saw as akin to the mythological bird that gets consumed by fire and is then reborn from its ashes.

“When I moved here, it was a depressed town. But then the Colonial Theater opened; four art galleries opened up; we got two coffee houses; and there was this rebirth,” said Stubbe Teglbjaerg. “The myth of the phoenix rising out of the ashes fit perfect, and I think that’s why this festival was so embraced by our town.”

Today, he is the lone organizer of the festival and spends three months each year creating its wooden centerpiece.

And each year, he joins revelers as it is reduced to a smoldering pile of lumber that becomes a symbol of hope and pride.

Read more about Henrik Stubbe Teglbjaerg and the Phoenixville Firebird Festival in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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