Group looks to keep Gemini Giant in Wilmington on Route 66

The future of the Gemini Giant as a Route 66 icon is at stake, but the effort to keep it part of the Wilmington section of the historic highway just got stronger.

Veterans of Foreign Wars Malcolm J. Mayo Post 5422 in Wilmington has joined a local resident’s efforts to buy the 30-foot fiberglass statue and keep it in town.

The Gemini Giant is up for sale in an online auction that began this week and ends March 20, according to the Grafe Auction website on which bids can be placed.

Depending on who buys it, the statue could go anywhere, said Scott Durano, adjutant with VFW Post 5422.

“People across the country and even around the world stop to see that giant – the Gemini Giant,” Durano said. “It could go to another country.”

The Gemini Giant along Route 53 is part of the historic Route 66 highway that is traveled by people from across the U.S. and other parts of the world for a trip considered to be an adventure into old Americana.

The Wilmington statue of a giant astronaut holding a rocket was one of many different types of such fiberglass figures created in the 1960s as advertising props, just the sort of glimpse into a bygone era that delights Route 66 travelers. When the Joliet JackHammers minor league baseball team was created in 2002, the owners of the team found one such statue depicting a giant construction worker and brought it to the Joliet stadium as an attraction.

“We want to keep it within Wilmington,” Durano said of the Gemini Giant. “We have a suitable location for it.”

VFW Post 5422 is located on Route 53, part of the old Route 66 and just about a mile south of where the Gemini Giant has been located since about 1960, which is outside The Launching Pad restaurant that is no longer in business.

The owner of the property has put the Gemini Giant and dozens of other items, including stools, napkin holders and Gemini Giant bobbleheads still inside the Launching Pad, up for auction.

Ryan Jandura, who lives just outside Wilmington and, like many people, has been impressed by the Gemini Giant since he first saw it as a child, started a GoFundMe page to raise money to buy the statue and keep it in the area.

Jandura as of mid-afternoon on Friday had raised $7,244.

But Grafe Auction listed the high bid at $45,000 at that point.

“He’s known worldwide,” Jandura said of the giant. “It’s anyone’s guess who’s bidding on it.”

Jandura, Durano and other VFW members got together this week and decided to combine their efforts.

“It’s a huge step forward for us, plus the fact that this is a great group,” Jandura said of the new alliance with VFW Post 5422. “They’re a nonprofit, and they have a huge following.”

But, Jandura and VFW Post 5422 are not the only local people interested in the Gemini Giant.

“We have a grant, and we are interested,” said Quinn Adamowski, board president at the Joliet Area Historical Museum.

The museum last year was awarded a $1 million state grant that was to be used to acquire The Launching Pad along with the Gemini Giant to restore the site as a tourist stop. While the museum is about 15 miles from Wilmington, it is on Joliet’s stretch of Route 66 and has a Route 66 visitors center that also is a stopping point for many travelers along the route.

The museum has not worked out a deal to buy the property and has not made clear publicly whether it intends to do so. But The Launching Pad, which could not survive as a restaurant, would seem to have little attraction as a tourist stop without the Gemini Giant.

Museum board President Quinn Adamowski would not say whether the museum has put in a bid for the Gemini Giant or intends to do so. And, he did not rule it out.

“We are looking at all the possible avenues,” Adamowski said.