The Daily Iowan HERE’S TO HERKY THE HAWK
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2023
THE INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA COMMUNITY SINCE 1868
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A look back at 75 years of the beloved University of Iowa mascot Herky the Hawk.
Cody Blissett | The Daily Iowan
Herky flexes during a football game between Iowa and Western Michigan at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City on Sept. 16. Herky celebrated his 75th birthday during halftime. Marandah Mangra-Dutcher Managing Editor, Enterprise and Design marandah-mangra-dutcher@uiowa.edu
After a live black bear and multiple Great Danes failed to serve as an enduring symbol of the Hawkeyes, the University of Iowa found a school mascot who has withstood the test of time: Herky the Hawk. The beloved mascot turns 75 this year. While some birthday wishes took place at FRYfest on Sept. 1 in Coralville with thousands of Hawkeye Fans and over ten of his mascot friends, Herky still looks forward to a full year of celebration ahead of him.
Herky takes flight Herky originally hatched in 1948, shown in illustrations created by then-UI journalism professor Dick Spencer III. However, the boisterous bird was not officially named until 1949. Many are surprised to learn his full name is Hercules, after the Greek mythological figure. The hawk was seen only in Spencer’s illustrations until 1959 but Herky eventually found himself attending games at Iowa Stadium where he watched from the sideline. At the time he wore football pants, a black and gold jersey and paper mache head. He occasionally found himself in trouble
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for dangerous antics, according to a timeline in his exhibit at the UI Athletics Hall of Fame. During these early years, other mascots who wore paper mache heads were popping up around the Big Ten like Bucky the Badger in 1949 and Purdue Pete in 1956. In the 1960s, the fraternity Delta Tau Delta took Herky under their wing and cared for him until they lost their charter, and were removed from the UI campus in 1999. According to the front page of a 1999 edition of The Daily Iowan, the chapter had its charter revoked for “flagrant drug and alcohol use” and Herky wanted nothing to do with it. The original building, 322 N. Clinton St., still
“All of a sudden I think like, ‘Oh my gosh, who is going to be Herky’s best friend?’ If the fraternity members had been Herky’s best friend for 40 or 50 years, who’s going to get to do that? ” Carrie Norwood
One of the first women involved in the Herky program
stands and now houses the Bedell Entrepreneurship Learning Laboratory. Carrie Norwood, a former member of the Herky program and UI alum from 1999 until 2002, said she remembers the day the removal was announced. It was common knowledge that Herky was associated with Delta Tau Delta. Norwood said she immediately began to wonder what was going to happen to Herky. “All of a sudden I think like, ‘Oh my gosh, who is going to be Herky’s best friend?’ If the fraternity members had been Herky’s best friend for 40 or 50 years, who’s going to get to do that?” she said. Herky quickly found himself under the supervision of the UI Spirit Squads later that same year. The UI Spirit Squads posted an advertisement in the May 3, 1999 edition of DI for students to try for a chance to become a part of Herky’s new squad. The advertisement is what drew Norwood to the program, she said. “My [rowing] teammate was sitting next to me, she was reading The Daily Iowan and I’m looking off in, you know, la la land or listening to some music,” Norwood said. “All of a sudden she says, ‘Oh, they’re gonna have tryouts to be Herky’s best friend.’ And my jaw hit the floor. I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to be Herky’s best friend. I’m going to do that.’”
HERKY | 2A
THE BEAR BEFORE THE BIRD
Before there was Herky, there was Burch. The live bear cub served as the UI’s very first mascot before meeting an untimely demise. IC comic book store adapts to digital age Since 1986, Daydreams Comics has provided a space for new and longtime comic book fans. 80 HOURS | 1C
ONLINE • Look out for The Daily Iowan’s coverage of the UI Homecoming celebration and live conversation with senior women’s basketball guard Caitlin Clark on Oct. 6 at dailyiowan.com. • Listen to The Daily
Iowan’s latest episodes of the news podcast Above the Fold and sports podcast Press Box Banter on streaming platforms and at dailyiowan.com.
Photo contributed by the University of Iowa Digital Library archives
Burch poses with the Iowa football team in 1908. The live bear was the first mascot for the university. Parker Jones Managing Editor
parker-jones@uiowa.edu
Over 110 years ago, Herky didn’t exist. Instead, the University of Iowa’s mascot lumbered around campus on four furry paws and filed down claws. Burch the Bear was the UI’s first mascot. A live black bear cub, Burch was purchased in September 1908 to bring “good luck” to the Iowa football team. Although there are conflicting records of the bear’s exact origin, a 1908 edition of The Daily Iowan wrote that
former football coach Mark Catlin bought the five-month-old, 50-pound bear cub from the University of Idaho. Burch was shipped across the country via railroad in a wooden box. Once he arrived, his claws and teeth were reportedly filed down so that he would be of little threat to handlers and football players alike. Still, Burch was a wild animal. One account from October 1908 recalls how the bear “dug his filed tooth into one daring Iowa College freshman.” He intimidated the football team on a regular basis, including on a trip to Missouri in 1909 when he “drove the entire squad into
one small corner of the bus.” According to callous headlines from March 1910, Burch’s “career” ended after the bear escaped his cage and lived on the lam for a few days, making his way to Coralville before farmers found his body in the cold waters of the Iowa River. Burch’s head was supposedly the only part of his body able to be preserved and was taken to taxidermist Homer Dill to be preserved for an exhibit in the UI’s Museum of Natural History. No record of the bear’s head exists at the museum. Dill was “known to not habitually catalog display objects,” according to a 2016 note from Cindy Opitz, the UI collections manager with the Museum of Natural History. The museum frequently receives requests about Burch, but the trail always leads to a dead end. “The UI Museum of Natural History has no official record of the bear ever actually reaching them or joining their collections,” wrote Jessica Smith, communications coordinator for the Pentacrest Museums, in an email to the DI. Although Burch’s life ended prematurely, his legacy lingers on. He is immortalized in name through a craft beer sold by Big Grove Brewery, called “Burch the Bear Brown Ale.” The bear is also remembered through St. Burch Tavern, which rebranded in 2018, and has several Burch photos and UI memorabilia in its basement bar affectionately nicknamed “the den.” One owner of St. Burch, Nate Kaeding, said he decided on the new name after researching Burch’s story at the UI Main Library archives and Johnson County Historical Society. As a history buff born and raised in Iowa City, Kaeding wanted the restaurant’s title to be an ode to local folklore. “As a nod to Burch and the university, we kind of wanted to deify him in kind of a fun way by giving him sainthood,” Kaeding said.