Hopped up for Easter
Hailey Lopez bounces along a race course in a “Bunny Hop” sack race during Moody Gardens’ Easter in the Gardens on Sunday.
On a sun-soaked Easter Sunday at Moody Gardens, a horde of 6- and 7-year olds took their positions on the perimeter of a fenced grassy field dotted with pastel-colored plastic eggs. Parents held their smartphones out, ready to capture the ensuing chaos as the children eyed their potential bounty.
A distinctive baritone boomed over the public address system like a voice from the heavens: “5…4…3…2…1…Go! And mayhem!”
The children bolted toward the plastic eggs, and for several minutes, the din of youthful exuberance rang out across the field. The most nimble children pursued eggs like a squirrel to a nut, filling their tiny Easter baskets and leaving the less dexterous of the bunch pouting, sometimes in tears.
About 30 yards from the egg hunt, near a tent where a line of children waited to get their face painted, the source of that
booming voice stood holding a microphone. Dressed in a pink polo shirt with a ball cap, Steve Smith, a former Houston news anchor and now the “voice of Moody Gardens,” beamed as the children knocked each other over for the simple pleasure of a plastic egg filled with a tootsie roll.
“I just like watching the kids do their thing,” Smith said, chuckling.
Smith retired from the news business in 1999, eager to travel and spend time with his wife. But with a rich, orotund voice that would sound as perfect narrating a nature documentary as it does emceeing an Easter egg hunt, Smith figured he would keep his vocal cords in shape. Two days after his retirement, Smith, who owns a home in Galveston, was on the phone with Moody Gardens and has been a fixture at the tourist hotspot for 19 years. That’s his voice you hear when you walk from your car into the aquarium, informing the public of the various attractions.
“Fortunately, the pipes have held up,” Smith said.
Indeed, those pipes got a nice workout this holiday weekend. Smith, a self-described “cradle Catholic,” participated in a vigil at his church in Houston the night before, where he does an annual reading from the Bible.
“It’s Genesis, the beginning of the world. I always love starting and saying, ‘In the beginning…’” Smith said, lowering his sonorous vocals for effect. “That gets their attention.”
At the conclusion of the egg hunt, Smith bestowed four tickets to Moody Gardens to one lucky kid with a golden egg. He took joy in observing the simple pleasures of sugar-high children running around in pursuit of more candy to satisfy their fix.
“We don’t have any grandkids, so all these are my grandkids,” Smith said. “I love watching them participate in all this business.”
Of course, not all of the children came away satisfied, burdened with the expectations of a basket overflowing with purple, pink, blue, and orange eggs.
Olivia Frome, 7, with curly blond locks lamented her egg-finding skills to her mother, Lauren, and her brother, Michael, who were cheering her on from the sidelines. The Fromes traveled from Houston to spend the day at Moody Gardens after a church service Sunday morning.
“I only got 13; everyone else got more,” Olivia said, her bottom lip curling out in disappointment despite a more than reasonable haul.
Michael, 9, took notes for his age group’s upcoming egg hunt.
“My thing is, where there’s a bunch of eggs, I just run over,” he said. A sound strategy, to be sure.
Across the field, one of Michael’s egg-hunt competitors, Emilia Olveda, 9, got ready for Smith’s bassy voice to signal her to pounce on the eggs. Her father, Sergio looked on and offered words of encouragement.
“I like getting to spend the time with my daughter,” Sergio said. A Galveston native and Moody Gardens member, he hoped that he could squeeze one more year out of the egg hunt next year, despite Emilia pushing up against the age limit. But even if he can’t, Emilia will always have an egg hunt at her grandparents’ house to which to look forward, with arguably an even better reward.
“Barbecue, brisket with the family,” Sergio said. “That’s our regular Easter Sunday.”