Hastings woman wants to put footless goose back in spotlight

His name was Andy, and he was hatched in the late 1980s without feet. Her grandfather, Hastings inventor Gene Fleming, made Andy tiny sneakers so he could walk.

That caused a lot of hoopla for goose and Grandpa: They were featured in People magazine and appeared on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” and their fame spread to far-flung countries such as Germany and Australia.

For Jessica — in the full throes of teen angst — it all seemed stupid, and, worse, embarrassing. She and her family lived with her grandfather in Hastings.

“I wanted nothing to do with it,” she said recently. “I was shoveling goose poop at one end of the mall (at an Andy display) when other kids were at the arcades at the other end.”

Her feelings started to evolve when Andy was brutally murdered and dismembered in 1991. Her grandfather was devastated, and she began to feel sorry for him. Although plenty of theories — and rumors — were being tossed around, no one was ever charged with the crime.

Now, after 30 years, Korgie is putting the spotlight on Andy once again. “Andy Interrupted,” her one-woman show about her grandfather, the goose, the unsolved death and what’s happening now, premieres Saturday at the Benson Theatre, with a repeat performance Sunday.

“I am in a place where I never imagined I would go,” she said last week. “It’s still an unfinished story for me. It has woven in and out of my life whether I wanted it to or not.”

The show is one step in her plan to introduce Andy to a new generation of fans. She had been trying to trademark him and his story and needed to register in different areas of commerce. She originally thought she would create a documentary to partially satisfy that requirement, “but it was taking too long, and I was up against extension fees I didn’t want to pay,” she said.

She also feared competition for the trademark and wanted to beat others to the punch.

So she wrote this weekend’s stand-up show. And she now has the trademark.

With it, she hopes to launch a children’s book series collaborating with other authors, create a line of toys and still produce that documentary.

Apart from that — as a personal goal — she wants to raise money for a bronze Andy statue somewhere in Hastings. That was her grandfather’s dream.

When Fleming was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, she said, he had been working with Texas artist Christopher Smith on the sculpture, but his disease advanced before he finalized the deal. Fleming died at the end of 1999.

Korgie, who lives in Hickman, Nebraska, said she has contacted Smith, and he is still willing to make the statue. It would be 10% larger than the real Andy and would cost about $39,000, plus another $10,000 or so to transport it to Hastings and install it. She said she’s seeking grant funding and exploring other avenues to make that happen.

“I’m hoping that there’s a group out there that will say ‘here’ and hand me all the money,” she joked.

She also said she has contacted Hastings officials who were “pretty responsive” to the statue project.

All of these efforts, she said, mirror some of the things her grandfather was doing before he got sick to keep Andy’s legacy alive.

He had a book deal with Doubleday that he couldn’t follow through on, and he was working with the entertainment company that had licensed the Muppets to see what they could do for him, she said.

“I realized I’m an awful lot like my grandfather in many ways,” Korgie said.

This weekend’s show has four “chapters,” she said:

• The setup. Who her grandfather was.

• His rise to fame with Andy, which started with an article on Oct. 10, 1988, in the Hastings Tribune.

• A murder most “fowl.” The story of Andy’s death and the search for his killers

• What she’s doing now to revive his legacy.

She’s still as baffled as anyone about the death. Fleming tried to solve it as well. Some said it could have been a coyote. Others said authorities knew who it was, but never revealed their names or attempted to prosecute, perhaps because they were mentally challenged.

At one point, she even wondered whether her grandfather had something to do with it, though she dismissed that theory. She went so far as to request a seance with a psychic, who said Andy told her that Grandpa wasn’t the killer.

There was a reward fund with about $8,000 in it, but after a few years, it went to a Hastings charity that helped young people.

Ultimately, she said, “I realized that I love Nancy Drew but I’m not her. And my goal is not to ruin anybody’s life by outing them.”

She wants old-timers to remember Andy as a symbol of hope, invention and overcoming adversity and for kids to find joy in learning about the inspirational goose who wore shoes and the innovative inventor who made sure he could walk.

“The whole idea is ‘Let’s forget about the murder, and remember Andy as bigger, badder, bolder — and not dead,” she said.