The original Kermit the Frog, his body created with an old dull-green coat and his eyes made of pingpong balls, has returned home to the nation's capital, where the puppet got his start. The first Kermit creation from Jim Henson's Muppet's collection appeared in 1955 on the early TV show “Sam and Friends,” produced at Washington's WRC-TV. Henson's widow Jane Henson on Wednesday donated 10 characters from the show to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. She said the original characters provided five minutes of fun each night after the local news. “I think people realized that if you put Kermit's face up there, it was just as powerful,” Jane Henson, 76, said. “We were mostly just doing it to entertain ourselves.” The Hensons attended the University of Maryland and got into the TV business with Willard Scott and other pioneers while in college. Their connection to the area makes the Smithsonian a perfect home for Henson's original puppets, friends said. “It's not just the puppets coming home, but in a way it's Jane and Jim coming home,” said Arthur Novell, executive director of the nonprofit Jim Henson Legacy in New York City. “They started their careers, their lives in Washington.” Even though they were in Washington, Kermit deliberately did not do politics or dabble in religion, Jane Henson said. The Smithsonian already has a familiar Kermit the Frog puppet made famous on “Sesame Street” and “The Muppet Show.” But the original Kermit was more lizard-like, and a duller green. His body was made from an old coat thrown out by Henson's mother.
