I believe it was my Junior year, 1955-56, that Principal John Hammerling came into the art room with another man and asked if some-one would design a mascot for Pendleton High School.
The motive was that the novelty salesman was there trying to get an order for small rubber mascot pins, but there was no mascot!
I don’t remember taking much time to come up with an idea, and I don’t know if anyone else in the art class submitted a design. It was never a big deal, and I treated it as an assignment.
The following year after the mascot pins had their debut, some of us decided to make a large papier mache version of the Irishman mounted on a wheeled platform to be rolled out onto the basketball floor at home games. There are photographs of him in the 1957 PAPYRUS on pages 17, 44 and 69.
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The Irishman was last seen leaving town about the same time as South Madison School consolidation.
As part of the compromise of consolidation, the new school (Pendleton Heights High School) kept the colors of Pendleton High School (green and white) and the mascot of Markleville High School (Arabians).
Sherry Rencenberger Boram is a 1957 Pendleton High School graduate.
