Everyone remembers Mighty Joe, either the man or the gorilla. Well, our huge, larger-than-life Mighty Joe, embodies the spirit of our beloved son Joseph Valenzano.
Outside Wildwood in 2003, George tottered on broken feet.
When we first saw Mighty Joe, he was named “George” and stood 25 feet above a South Jersey go-kart track. Others knew him from even earlier times, when he towered over the beachfront boardwalk in Wildwood, New Jersey as “Kongo-Pongo” and “Magilla.”
George was in sad shape when we first met, pitched forward onto his mighty gorilla fists because his feet had buckled in a storm. Larry Valenzano noticed George driving on Hwy 47 to and from Wildwood. The gorilla, he said, “Always reminded me of my larger-than-life son Joe.”
The younger Valenzano was a former body builder nicknamed “Mighty Joe” who died of a brain tumor in 1999. Larry, heartbroken, renamed his gas station “Mighty Joe’s” in his son’s honor. Then he bought the big gorilla to serve as a memorial and a mascot.
Mighty Joe and his message.
“My wife thought I was crazy” Larry said. “She told me, ‘That guy’s not gonna sell you that gorilla, you’re out of your mind. Why would he would sell that to you?’“. But after all was said and done, Larry was able to purchase the gorilla, bypassing 15 higher bidders. Larry will always remember the previous owner of the gorilla saying “I don’t need the money, and the reason you want it is more important.“.
It almost didn’t matter, because while Larry was figuring out how to ship the gorilla to his gas station, someone showed up at the go-kart track and tried to steal it. “I think they were from a mini-golf course in Ocean City” Larry said. Luckily the owner saw them and chased them off the property. They probably would have painted it pink.
Larry finally figured out how to haul the gorilla cross-state, and after six months in a repair shop, Mighty Joe was unveiled in 2004. It cost Larry five times as much to fix him as it cost to buy him. But that was still peanuts, or banana chips, compared to the $50,000 that it originally cost to build the gorilla in Spain, at least according to people who’ve stopped at Mighty Joe’s and told that to Larry.
Tribute wall to Mighty Joe Valenzano.
The gorilla stands on the south side of the gas station parking lot, inside a white metal fence, his scowling mug set against a backdrop of South Jersey pine trees and blue sky. Joe’s looking spiffy these days — his eyes, mouth, and even his fingernails have been given fresh coats of paint that gleam against his flat black fiberglass fur. A hole in his chest, which once held a rickety slide, has been covered with a sign and his eyes now glow red at night.
The sign reads:
“Hello, my name is Mighty Joe. My job is to look up to heaven from time to time and say
‘HEY, JOE, WE WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU’‘ “