Page 8 University Daily Kansan Friday, Nov. 7, 1958
Mythical Bird With Shoes Becomes KU Mascot
When the mythical KU mascot, the Jayhawk, first flapped its wings over the campus, it met with opposition. It was referred to as that crazy bird with shoes.
"It was the shoes, that made the bird," Mr. Malov said.
Mr. Maloy, who is now retired in the shadow of the University whose history he helped make with a controversial and mythical bird, lives at the Colonial Hotel.
"When I first came to the University in the fall of 1910, the bulldog was the emblem which was used on sweaters and pennants," he said.
There was the word Jayhawk in a yell, but Jayhawkers were people of early Kansas who did not respect property rights. No one had ever thought of a Jayhawk as being a bird.
Henry (Hank) Maloy, creator of the Jayhawk, chuckled as he recalled his undergraduate days and the birth of the bird that wore shoes.
He talked as he shuffled through suitcases of KU momentos and old Kansans.
It was in the fall of 1912 that Mr. Maloy first tried to work the word "jayhawk" into a bird. Until that time, he had been drawing bulldogs in his cartoons for The Daily Kansas.
"We used to beat the Kansas Aggies regularly in football in those days," Mr. Maloy said. "So when they came up here to get beat in October of 1912, I was scratching around for an idea. Then, I spotted a stuffed chicken hawk in the window of a photographic studio."
Until that time Mr. Maloy had been thinking that the word, jay-hawk, in the yell "rock chalk, jay-hawk" was a verb. When jayhawkers go jayhawking, they jayhawk, he deduced.
He began to meditate on the word "jayhawk" for a minute or two as he stared into the window. He decided that this was the idea he had been looking for.
"Everybody was singing a song that went: 'Every time I come to
town, the boys start kicking my dawg aroun',' Mr. Maloy said, 'So just by changing 'boys to' Jayhawk,' I hoped I had what would pass for an idea.
"I wanted to show a farmer who had just come to town with a dawg
—the Aggie Team—on a leash with a big Jayhawk kicking it," he said. That was the birth of the mythica Jayhawk on the Kaw. A bird which had become so famous by 1944, tha Kirke Meechem, secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society, sait
in a foreword to a pamphlet on the Jayhawk that: the Jayhawk is worth more to the state as an attention getter than "all the wheat, oil, Indians, and buffaloes put together."
Rambling Campus Puts Students in Rush
After its first appearance, Mr. Maloy used the bird a lot in Daily Kansan cartoons.
The KU campus rambles over the spacious landscape of Mount Oread.
The average coed can walk from Fraser Hall to Lindley Hall in 10 minutes. That is if she isn't held up by the hourly traffic jam at Jayhawk Boulevard and Sunflower Drive.
This spaciousness gives the campus a natural, uncluttered look. The hill and its valleys are noted for their beauty. Mount Oread also provides young Kansans with the most muscular legs in America.
on the west end of the campus.
If a student is on the third floor of Fraser when the whistle blows, chances are about 50-50 he will be late for a class in any of the buildings
Leaving Bailey Hall, a good legman can reach the Music and Dramatic Arts Building in nine and three-quarters minutes. If he breaks his stride, he is late.
The odds change slightly in his favor if he has had previous training on the track squad.
Naturally, some of the buildings are relatively close to together. Some classes are not more than three or four minutes apart.
"I just kept making the shoes bigger, because I was more likely to get laughs that way." Mr. Maloy said.
Despite the distance problem, KU students do a remarkable job of meeting schedules. And they do it good naturally.
However, the time involved in moving from one's residence to the campus is another story. For instance, McCook Hall, a residence for men under Memorial Stadium, is 12 walking minutes from Lindley. It takes 20 minutes to hike from the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity, located southeast of the campus, to the west end.
eific parking lots. Parking lot X is seven-tenths of a mile from the Music and Dramatic Arts Building, Another parking lot across from Allen Field House is nearly as far from Strong Hall.
Some residence housing for women is far removed from the central buildings. The women in Gertrude Sellards Pearson are one mile from the Chi Omega fountain. Most of them keep their ankles slim by taking the bus to school.
The rush between classes is part of the way of life on the hill.
It was the shoes that made the Jayhawk different from all other birds. It attracted a lot of attention, because even Walt Disney had not yet put shoes on his mice, cows, or crowns.
A rush between classes is part of the way of life on the hill.
Time is a precious commodity in the 10 minute breaks between classes. In many cases, the average walker can just make it from building to building in the allotted time.
Owning an automobile is usually little help in overcoming the time-distance problem. The streets are jammed with cars and pedestrians and traffic moves slowly between classes.
"Our class left school without ever having seen anything but the bulldog used at a Kansas rally." Mr. Maloy said.
Mr. Maloy was graduated in 1914. He did not come back to the University until 1922 for a game. When he did, the mythical bird he conceived was as much a part of the University as the students.
"The Missouri cheerleaders had a big Jayhawk like the one which had been running in The Daily Kansan with a man inside," said Mr. Maloy. "He was in a cage drawn by horses."
But Missouri used a Jayhawk in the last game of the season in 1914 at Columbia.
Mr. Maloy must look with amusement towards Mount Oread today. For now, it is a bronze Jayhawk—gift of the class of 1957—which is the burning issue of our time.
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