Hokie, Hokie, Hokie, Hy! Virginia Tech Symbols and Traditions

Hokie,

Hokie,

Virginia Tech Symbols and Traditions

Peel away the groundbreaking research, eminent scholarship, nationally ranked programs, and service to society that set Virginia Tech apart. Pare our world-renowned faculty, highachieving students, and dedicated staff. What remains? At our base, you’ll find an innovative core that permeates even our traditions.

Published by University Relations.

Virginia Tech. CopyrightŠ 2015 ii

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TRADITION-MAKER John M. McBryde

University President 1891-1907

Several of our traditions date back to the late 19th century after we hired John M. McBryde as president. His 16 years at the helm were so impressive that two other colleges tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to lure him to their camps, including that school down the road in Charlottesville.

McBryde assumed his duties as president of Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College, as we were known then, in 1891 and immediately began reorganizing the curriculum. His vision was for us to become more professional and technical, and his plan for implementing that vision laid the foundation for modern-day Virginia Tech.

McBryde’s changes in the little school in Blacksburg spurred the Virginia General Assembly to make a change of its own in 1896 to reflect the “new” college. Our name became—and you’d better take a deep breath if you want to pronounce it aloud—Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College and Polytechnic Institute. It’s no wonder that the general populace shortened it to Virginia Polytechnic Institute, or simply VPI, but it took the General Assembly another 48 years to make it official. At least we learned then that the Old Dominion is not about to adopt a new fad too quickly.

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FULFILLING OUR MOTTO Since 1896, when Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College and Polytechnic Institute adopted the motto Ut Prosim (That I May Serve) under President McBryde, students have graduated from the university knowing that true leaders and world citizens make service to others an important part of their lives. Today, students and alumni contribute untold hours annually to various causes. It’s become perhaps Virginia Tech’s most important tradition.

Today, service is infused throughout every fiber of the university, including such organizations as VT Engage: The Community Learning Collaborative, which among many projects directs the Remember-Serve-Learn Initiative. Volunteers from the Tech community and beyond commit to 20 hours of service between the National Day of Service on September 11 and Tech’s Day of Remembrance on April 16.

Relay for Life is a national effort to raise funds for the American Cancer Society, but the Virginia Tech community has embraced it with such passion that it regularly ranks as one of the most successful university-based Relay for Life events in the country. As many as 10,000 participants essentially camp out on the Drillfield for 12 hours, annually raising more than $500,000.

Yet another student-run tradition helps fund important initiatives like The Big Event and Relay for Life. Every year, students come up with a new design for the next Hokie Effect orange and maroon T-shirts, and then they sell more than 90,000 of them to enthusiastic Tech fans, who wear the orange one to a specific football game and the maroon one to another, bathing Lane Stadium in a sea of Hokie colors.

Two other examples of the service tradition making a local and a national impact are The Big Event and Relay For Life.

In The Big Event, Virginia Tech’s largest community service project, volunteers pledge to help complete various community projects in the Blacksburg and Christiansburg areas. In 2014, 7,800 volunteers finished nearly 900 projects in this student-run event. Whether they’re picking up trash by the road or helping clean and repair the home of a person who’s no longer physically able to do so, students learn lifetime lessons while having fun.

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UNIVERSITY SEAL Aided by his son, also named John, President McBryde developed a coat of arms and seal, all the trimmings needed to grace the hallways of academe.

The coat of arms features a shield divided into four quarters. The first quarter portrays the figures from the obverse of the Seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia—representing our status as the state’s land-grant college.

The third quarter shows a chemical retort (a glass vessel used for distilling) over a flame, with liquid dripping into a graduate beaker—expressing our additional academic scope.

Since the college would need a seal for official documents, the McBrydes encircled the coat of arms with a band that includes the name of the institution. In the late 19th century, the name used was the unofficial Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Today, we use our official name, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Yes, after the General Assembly finally changed our name to Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1944, another name change occured in 1970, giving us four names over the course of our history.

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Above the shield sits the burning lamp of knowledge being filled by a human hand.

The second quarter is comprised of a transit theodolite (an instrument that measures horizontal and vertical angles) and a leveling rod superimposed over a scroll—reflecting our engineering heritage.

And the fourth quarter illustrates an upright half-shucked ear of corn—depicting our agricultural roots.

At the bottom lie the Latin words Ut Prosim, which translate to “That I May Serve.” Ut Prosim remains a timeless ideal for our land-grantschool values of discovery, learning, and engagement.

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UNIVERSITY LOGOS TM

Nearly a century after the McBrydes created the official seal, Larry Hincker, associate vice president for University Relations, recognized the need for a less formal visual element that we could use on signs, publications, and other items that don’t require the official seal. So in the early 1990s, Hincker and graphic designer Michele Moldenhauer developed a logo, which consists of a shield that incorporates the Pylons of the War Memorial, underscored with the year of the university’s founding: 1872. The shape of the shield reflects the collegiate heritage of all universities.

The university officially adopted the logo in May 1991 and updated it in 2006.

The 2006 update followed a yearlong study by a branding consultant, who worked closely with the university community to develop a representative tagline for Virginia Tech. That tagline—Invent the Future—expresses the future-altering and future-enhancing work of each facet of the Virginia Tech experience. So usually when you see the updated logo, you’ll see the version that incorporates the tagline.

The university also has an athletic logo: a streamlined VT, which is used only for sports and sports merchandise. Unveiled in 1984, the athletic logo is a composite of designs submitted by two Virginia Tech art students—Lisa Eichler, of Chesapeake, Virginia, and Chris Craft, of Roanoke, Virginia—to a competition sponsored by the university’s art department. It replaced an older athletic logo that consisted of a large V with a T centered inside it, which had debuted in 1957.

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SCHOOL COLORS Now, let’s go back to the 1890s, which introduced at least one more lasting tradition: our colors. If you think they tend toward the unusual now, consider that originally they were black and cadet gray. That combo was picked in 1891 by the brand-new student-run Athletic Association to reflect the principal colors of the cadet uniforms worn by the all-male, military student body. But when the black and gray appeared on athletic uniforms in the striped style popular in the late19th century, some fans complained that our athletes looked like convicts.

So we did what all good schools do when faced with a problem—we formed a committee. Actually, the Corps of Cadets and a few other people from the college banded together to examine the question of colors. What they found, or, rather, what they didn’t find was a college or university anywhere in the country that had orange and maroon as its school colors. So we decided to be innovative—maybe even bodacious—in the color category.

In 1896, we established burnt orange and Chicago maroon as our official colors.

Because nearly every Hokie fan in Lane Stadium wears these hues to football games, it sometimes looks like we’ve extended the fall colors of the surrounding countryside past the normal time when trees have dropped their leaves.

So you might think of our colors as environment-friendly.

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NICKNAMES

Hokies We hear it again and again. What’s a Hokie? The short answer is that a Hokie is a supporter of Virginia Tech.

The long answer takes—well—longer, but is certainly more interesting. When the General Assembly changed our name to Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College and Polytechnic Institute, we needed a new college cheer.

Rip, Rah, Ree! Va, Va, Vee! Obviously, with “and Polytechnic Institute” added to our name, that wouldn’t work (picture the last line: “A-M-C-&-P-I!”). So the college, whose name was shortened in popular usage Virginia, Virginia! to Virginia Polytechnic Institute, or, simply, VPI, held a contest for the student body to come A-M-C! The old one had been a simple play on the college’s name:

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up with a new spirit yell. The cheer entered by O.M. Stull, a member of the Class of 1896, won the five-dollar prize for first place. Like the old cheer, the new one was also a play on the college’s name, but this one was a little more complex—or at least it had more words in it: The “e” was added to “Hoki” some time later, either for looks or to forestall mispronunciation of the word that Stull inspired merely as an attention-grabber in the cheer, which became known as “Old Hokie.”

Gobblers Interestingly, another nickname, one that didn’t exist when Stull wrote the cheer, was once more popular than Hokies. We referred to ourselves as “Gobblers” beginning in the early 20th century, and it was used more often than “Hokies”—at least until the 1980s.

So how did “Gobblers” originate? In 1909, football Coach Branch Bocock pulled his players aside, one by one, and initiated them into an impromptu and informal

Hoki, Hoki, Hoki, Hy! Techs, Techs, V.P.I.!

Sola-Rex, Sola-Rah. Polytechs – Vir-gin-i-a.!

Rae, Ri, V.P.I.!

“Gobbler Club” to build team spirit and camaraderie.

After that, the name took off, appearing in print for the first time that same year. Some other stories float around about the origins of the nickname on campus, so maybe Bocock was influenced by a gobbler spirit that permeated the campus. Nonetheless, his “club” does seem to be the kick-off point for wider use of the nickname.

At some time during the Gobbler heyday, a myth arose that the nickname was derived from the way our athletes ate their food. That myth ultimately spelled the demise of the nickname.

In the late 1970s, we hired a football coach/athletic director who eventually heard that the Gobblers moniker evolved from the eating habits of athletes. Not liking the image, he took steps in the early 1980s to ensure that our prominent nickname became Hokies rather than Gobblers—he even went so far as to remove the beloved turkey gobble from our scoreboard.

Frank Beamer, who had played on the Gobbler football team in the 1960s, put the gobble back on the scoreboard when he came to town in 1987 to coach the football team. But by then the Hokies nickname had stuck—even though fans still love to hear the scoreboard speakers emit that turkey gobble.

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MASCOT Virginia Tech’s beloved HokieBird has quite a history that’s intertwined with our nickname.

Initially, the official mascot was a VPI employee who had become a favorite of the cadets—and his special designation as mascot extended to his turkey, which eventually usurped his position. The Gobbler nickname had already become popular when—and no doubt was the reason why—Floyd “Hard Times” Meade, a local resident chosen by the student body to serve as the school’s mascot, trained a large turkey to perform various stunts. Meade first demonstrated his turkey’s skill—and strength—at a football game in 1913 by having the turkey pull a cart with Meade riding in it. But college President Joseph D. Eggleston Jr. thought the trick was cruel to the turkey and halted it after one game. So Meade only paraded the turkey, which he had trained to gobble on command, up and down the sidelines—and did so until another turkey trainer, William Byrd “Joe Chesty” Price, took over in 1924. Use of a live turkey mascot on the sidelines continued at least until Price retired in 1953.

While a costumed Gobbler joined the live turkey for at least one game in 1936, the first permanent costumed Gobbler did not appear until the fall of 1962. Mercer MacPherson, a civil engineering student, saw the mascot for another university and decided that VPI should have one as well. He learned what a mascot suit would cost and then raised the money, most of it from students.

EVOLUTION OF THE HOKIEBIRD

Drawings by George Wills

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Money in hand—all $200 of it—MacPherson drove to the manufacturing company, located in Pittsburgh, to help create the costume. The result, which MacPherson has called “a thing of beauty” (should we mention the eye of the beholder at this point?), was a somewhat unusual turkey with a cardinal-like head. It sported—in vital spots—real turkey feathers dyed in school colors.

The costume arrived a few days before the last football game of the season—what was then the annual Thanksgiving Day faceoff between VPI and VMI in the “Military Classic of the South.”

MacPherson donned the get-up to become the first of Virginia Tech’s permanent mascots. Even though the mascot was known as the Gobbler and then the Fighting Gobbler for 20 years, the costume itself underwent at least one major alteration. In 1971, it was modified to a long-necked bird—some 7 1/2 feet tall.

The long-necked version hung around for 10 years before the aforementioned football coach/athletic director began pushing to eliminate the Gobbler image. In 1981, student George Wills drew the assignment to sketch several new designs for his class project, and those designs went to a company in Cleveland that stitched together the final costume.

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George Wills, father of the current HokieBird that we know and love.

The new mascot made its first appearance in September 1981 at the Virginia Tech vs. Wake Forest football game, arriving on the playing field by helicopter. The turkey-like figure was referred to as “the Hokie mascot,” “the Hokie,” and “the Hokie bird.” Eventually, the term “Hokie bird” stuck, although it has since been merged into one word: HokieBird.

In 1986, another athletic director pushed for a redesigned HokieBird logo, and Wills, by then a local cartoonist and illustrator, latched onto the project, developing the big-chested bird we know so well today and charging all of $75 for his work. Peg Morse of the Athletics Department worked with Wills to alter the mascot costume to match the new logo.

Their goal was a turkey that conveyed power and strength, a mascot with moxie.

The new HokieBird made its debut on Sept. 12, 1987, during Virginia Tech’s football season opener against Clemson University. The now-famous mascot entered Virginia Tech history in style, riding onto the field in a white limousine escorted by the Hi-Techs and two students dressed as Secret Service agents.

Since that dramatic entrance, HokieBird has conquered the hearts of the Hokie Nation, becoming so popular that he landed an appearance on Animal Planet’s “Turkey Secrets” in 2002 and 2003 during the week before and the week of Thanksgiving (of course).

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CORPS OF CADETS So what’s the university’s longest-running tradition? That would be the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets, which traces its beginnings to the university’s founding in 1872 as Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College (VAMC).

Although the first students—all male—had to wear cadet uniforms and were involved in military training, disagreements erupted almost immediately over the level of that training. Brig. Gen. James H. Lane, a professor who oversaw the military program and became its first comman14

dant, wanted VAMC to follow the military organization of VMI. Charles L.C. Minor, the college president, viewed the training as a teaching aid. Their differences over the issue mushroomed over the years, resulting in a flurry of fisticuffs during a faculty meeting—and nearly spelling the demise of the college that was to become Virginia Tech.

VAMC waffled on the issue for several years—depending on the wishes of the members of the Board of Visitors appointed by whichever governor was in office at the time

(the corps wasn’t the only target of the board; it tossed out some presidents and the entire faculty a few times, too). The Corps of Cadets finally became a permanent organization in 1891.

Radford College, bringing all women’s programs back to Blacksburg. In 1973, the corps voluntarily accepted women into its ranks, setting the standard for even the service academies.

In 1923, President Julian A. Burruss cut the mandatory four-year military requirement for male students in half, a mere two years after the cadets had loudly voiced opposition to the acceptance of women as full-time students (we don’t think Burruss was retaliating, although he was the one who spearheaded the admittance of women).

One of three corps of cadets operating alongside a civilian student body at a public university, the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets is an invaluable component of the university, enhancing ceremonies, sparking enthusiasm, promoting the attributes of the Pylons, and setting the standard for leadership.

When the state proposed in 1944 moving all women’s programs to Radford College, which it named the Women’s Division of VPI, the corps staunchly objected, while Burruss, who was still president, said nothing. The cadets’ opposition helped influence a compromise that left some women’s programs on the Blacksburg campus (and allowed the cadets to continue beating a trail to the “Skirt Barn”).

Recognizing Our Heroes

Two more historic changes occurred in 1964, when President T. Marshall Hahn, in a move to transform VPI into a comprehensive university, made participation in the corps voluntary and ended the relationship with

Throughout its existence, the corps has itself spurred countless traditions, one of the most important being the Pylon Dedication Ceremony.

The Pylons above War Memorial Chapel hold a special place in Hokie hearts because they are etched with the names of every Virginia Tech student and graduate who has died defending our nation’s freedom, beginning with those lost during World War I. At the War Memorial’s center, the cenotaph displays the names of Virginia Tech’s seven Medal of Honor recipients.

Each person whose name is added is recognized during a special Pylon Dedication Ceremony conducted by the Corps of Cadets. During the ceremony, the corps’ regiment forms up on Drillfield Drive and Alumni Mall, facing the War Memorial. The Gregory Guard, the corps’ precision rifle drill team, performs a rifle salute, firing three volleys. The Color Guard presents the colors, the HightyTighties play, and a bugler performs “Echo Taps.”

The Pylons evoke Virginia Tech’s core values. They are are, from left to right, Brotherhood, Honor, Leadership, Sacrifice, 15

Service, Loyalty, Duty, and Ut Prosim. A list of the names on the Pylons can be found at www.vt.edu/about/buildings/war-memorial-chapel-pylons.html.

The March of History The Corps of Cadets does a lot of marching around campus and in parades, but every year the freshman class, along with their training chain of command, completes a particularly significant 26-mile trek from Craig County to campus, known as the Caldwell March, to commemorate the journey of Addison Caldwell, the first student to enroll at Virginia Agricultural And Mechanical College.

In order to make this difficult hike easier to handle, the corps divides it into two portions, with the more strenuous section up and down Brush Mountain coming later in the school year. It serves as a rite of passage as the first-year students prepare to become sophomores.

SKIPPER

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When Caldwell undertook his long trek, he almost certainly wasn’t thinking about establishing any sort of a tradition, except perhaps one involving family members going on to higher education (two of his brothers also attended VAMC but did not graduate). His exact route from Sinking Creek to Blacksburg is unknown, but the first half of the march, which the cadets complete about six weeks into the fall semester and crosses Sinking Creek Mountain, closely follows the trail Caldwell is believed to have taken. Tracing the second half of Add’s trek to Blacksburg would involve walking beside U.S. Route 460, so the commandant’s office has routed it down less busy—and safer—roads.

The hike serves another purpose—as a fundraiser for the corps. Alumni sponsor individual cadets, adding tens of thousands of dollars to VTCC coffers annually.

Various cannons have been used off and on for years at Virginia Tech, but in the 1960s one industrious student formally proposed to the student governing body that a cannon be acquired to fire at football games. The proposal was approved but went no further.

About the same time, at a traditional Thanksgiving Day game with then-archrival Virginia Military Institute (VMI), two cadets from the Class of 1964 made a pact that they would build a cannon for Virginia Tech (then known as VPI) to outshine—or outblast-—VMI’s “Little John.” The cadets, Homer Hadley “Sonny” Hickam (of “October Sky” fame) and Alton B. “Butch” Harper Jr., were tired of hearing the VMI Keydets chant “Where’s your cannon?” after firing theirs.

Harper and Hickam collected brass from their fellow cadets and added it to metal provided by Hickam’s father, gathered donations from the corps to purchase other supplies, and used a mold created in one of the engineering departments from Civil War-style plans. They derived the name of the cannon—“Skipper”—from the fact that President John F. Kennedy, who had just been assassinated, had been the skipper of a PT-boat, and they wanted to do something to honor him.

On its first firing at the next game with VMI, the eager cadets tripled the charge, blowing the hats off half the VMI Keydets and shaking the glass in the press-box windows of Roanoke’s Victory Stadium. They never heard the VMI chant again. Today, cadets fire Skipper from outside Lane Stadium when the football team enters the field, when it scores, and for other notable occasions.

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HOKIE STONE

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While Virginia Tech invents the future, it does not forget its past. And nowhere is this reverence for tradition more evident than in the vista of the campus. Surrounding the Drillfield, numerous towering structures stand clad in the signature limestone that defines our buildings.

The earliest campus buildings were made of brick and were detailed with Victorian characteristics, a look that Tech’s leaders in the late 19th and early 20th centuries thought bore an unsettling resemblance to the factories of the time. President Joseph D. Eggleston described his displeasure succinctly, referring to the original buildings as resembling “poverty-stricken mills.”

The changeover to Hokie Stone started during the administration of President John M. McBryde. The first building using the native limestone was the campus YMCA—now known as the Performing Arts Building. Neo-Gothic architecture made its debut in 1905 with the construction of

the Chapel, which had been planned as a brick building. Faced with a shortage of bricks, the builders turned to native limestone for the structure. But the combination of neo-Gothic AND native limestone didn’t arrive until the first McBryde Hall, constructed in 1914 and razed in 1966. Today, the sculptures from its façade can be seen along the walkway on the west end of the second McBryde Hall.

Eggleston officially ignited this dramatic change in the campus architecture. His set-in-stone vision endured, except for a brief departure from the style in the late 1960s and early 1970s when a national trend turned to modernism in architecture. But in the 1990s a Board of Visitors committee expressed an intent that henceforth Hokie Stone should be used in all buildings constructed on the central campus, and in 2010 the entire board passed a resolution making that sentiment official policy. The result can be seen everywhere, even in the April 16 Memorial.

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GARGOYLES Their hunched bodies and contorted faces are the stuff of legend—including Hokie legend. Chiseled in stone and calling to mind the rooftops of Paris or the Halloween season, the gargoyles at Virginia Tech seem to fit right into the neo-Gothic stone look. And for some students, finding every one of them before graduation is a rite of passage.

At least 14 gargoyles adorn various buildings, including birds and “cowgoyles” on the Ag Quad. And while gargoyles might send a shiver down our spines or our imaginations racing, they have a purpose beyond mere ornamentation. Real gargoyles are simply waterspouts that move water from the gutters on the roof away from the building. The name “gargoyle,” is a modern corruption of the French word gargariser (“to gargle”), which the sculptures appear to do.

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According to Hugh Latimer, university architect, not all of the fixtures that we think of as gargoyles truly are. Many, including those cowgoyles, are “projected medallions,” meant simply for decoration. Instead of the costly process of carving a gargoyle rainspout out of stone, the university typically uses the more economical method of “scuppers” —U-shaped pieces of concrete that serve to drain rainwater from the roofs of campus buildings.

And while a number of the gargoyles sport monstrous faces, many members of the Virginia Tech community see these gargoyles and projected medallions in a much different light: not as monsters, but as unofficial mascots.

RINGING IN EACH CLASS

Colleges across the country offer students the chance to buy a class ring, but very few feature a ring that is redesigned each year to be unique to each class. This tradition began at Virginia Tech in 1911-12 and the resulting ring always embodies and invokes memories, traditions, and pride.

of many united as one. From there, the Ring Committee incorporates characteristics unique to its class.

Each year, the sophomore class selects a Ring Committee responsible for designing their class ring collection.

Each collection includes certain elements: the screaming eagle, American flag, campus buildings, and an interlocking chain around the bezel. The screaming eagle evolved from a pair of twin eagles used on the first Virginia Tech ring, symbolizing the twin virtues of strength and freedom. The American flag and campus buildings serve to recognize both the heritage of our country and Virginia Tech. The chain represents the strength

A display case in the Williamsburg Room at Squires Student Center contains Virginia Tech class rings since 1921.

Since 1934, the Virginia Tech Ring Dance, where couples have exchanged rings to the song “Moonlight and VPI,� has symbolized the transition from junior to senior.

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As you can see, Virginia Tech is steeped in tradition.

But we still work hard to sustain an environment that spurs the creation of knowledge that will transform society—and we love the blend that makes us unique.

V I R G I N I A P O LY T E C H N I C I N S T I T U T E A N D S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y