When Sally Lanyon and Ray Bourhis take a deep breath and look back on their time at Ohio State, neither ever thought a spherical papier-mâché and chicken wire head would become a university icon.
"I remember we were hanging out the Pi Phi house, homecoming was coming up and the they had papier-mâché sitting around for homecoming floats," Bourhis told Eleven Warriors. "They were all ready to make a float. I came up with the idea, 'Why are we making a float when we could be making history?' Although, at the time, I had no idea what would actually come of it."
"Had no idea at the time that we made it," Lanyon added. "Our publisher got it right when they wrote on the back cover, the very last words are, 'Who knew?' I think that really sums it up."
Say hello to the parents of Brutus Buckeye, the beloved mascot of The Ohio State University, who made his debut on this day 50 years ago, at halftime of the football team's game with Minnesota. Lanyon and Bourhis are co-authors of "The Autobiography of Brutus Buckeye," a rundown of the mascot's escapades from 1965 on, released in September.
Lanyon's citation of the book's publisher — Orange Frazer Press — accurately represent the feelings of Brutus' parents 50 years after his conception. Envisioning such popularity and growth into Ohio State's official mascot was hardly anticipated.
"Ray may have had a better vision than I did, but for me it was just like, 'OK, this is cool, we're doing this,'" Lanyon said. "Hindsight 20/20, once you see it on the other end, then you go, 'Oh. My. Word. This is so amazing.'"
Brutus began as an idea between two Buckeyes fond of each other and even fonder of their university. A year younger than Bourhis, Lanyon and her Pi Beta Phi sorority sisters molded the wooden framed, chicken wire-papier-mâchéd head in the days before the football team hosted the Golden Gophers homecoming weekend.
"Then after (the papier-mâché) dried, we painted it, painted the face on it, big blue eyes and we attached the smile and then had some eyebrows on it that could move on dowels," Lanyon said.
A PDF of two pages from the autobiography, with a look at Brutus' early years. Courtesy Orange Frazer Press
Lanyon, originally from Mansfield, Ohio, told Bourhis, an east coaster, the mascot had to be relative to a Buckeye Nut because it is the state's tree. It only made sense, with Ohio State residing in the heart of the state's capital.
"We decided it needed to be the Buckeye Nut, that that's what we would go with. We didn't want it to be a tree," Lanyon said. "Although, who would have known that Stanford was able to pull off a tree?"
"I'm from Queens, New York, so she said, 'You don't know what a Buckeye is,'" Bourhis added. "I do know what a Buckeye is, but my concern is how do you make a mascot out of a nut?"
But forged through flour, water, paint, chicken wire, wood and papier-mâché, the first installment of Brutus' head was born. It only needed a grand entrance into the Buckeye world.
"At the Minnesota game, the homecoming game, in 1965, we had the mascot hidden away in the bowels of Ohio Stadium and nobody knew what was coming," Bourhis said. "During the middle of the halftime show we marched out on the field, waddling around, and 87,000 fans went crazy."
Bourhis admits he experienced some backlash both from Lanyon and the others who helped produce the mascot, but glows when he recalls the reception it received from the Ohio Stadium crowd.
"When he left the field, the fans were chanting, 'We want the mascot! We want the mascot!' It was unbelievable," Bourhis said. "Sally and I then realized that we had really logged onto something here and that this was not going to go away."
Ohio State and Woody Hayes downed Minnesota that day, 11-10.
Brutus has done anything but go away. From his first appearance as papier-mâché, to his next one as fiberglass a few weeks later, and then later as a dancer or with an unpopular wink, the multiple stages of change into what we know him as today tell a story of a basic concept that blossomed into a revered personality.
"The most important aspect of it to me was that it has grown far beyond the concept of a sports mascot for basketball and football games," Bourhis said. "It has come to symbolize, and I don't think it's an exaggeration, to say that it symbolizes the entire university, all the good that comes from it."
Brutus now makes regular appearances at Nationwide Children's Hospital to brighten the days of the ill, works with the Make-A-Wish and Cystic Fibrosis Foundations as well many other research-intensive authorities to raise money for scholarships and the betterment of institution. He even tweets now, too.
Bourhis and Lanyon both said such moves were out of their hands upon their graduations from Ohio State in 1966 and 1967, just as were the changes in Brutus' appearance. An Ohio Staters member, Bourhis worked both with them and the athletic council to fund some of the early changes to the look — mainly the early fiberglass model — and name him. In the immediate weeks following his debut, the Athletic Council officially declared Brutus the school's mascot.
Then, Block O took over to fill the shoes of the person behind the head before Brutus became a part of the spirit program. At first, a cheerleader who didn't make the cut to wave pompoms Saturday afternoons became tasked with being the mascot. Today, it's a badge of honor and completely separate entity to be Brutus.
"I think we became forgotten for a long time, but the cool thing is you know the thought that it takes a village to raise a child," Lanyon said. "That whole concept really has applied to Brutus."
The university swooped in by the time Lanyon and Bourhis left Columbus went there separate ways and broke off their engagement, latching on to the idea of Brutus Buckeye the mascot, philanthropist and spirit head.
Lanyon now resides in Tucson, Arizona, where she is an Organizational Development Consultant after earning her masters from the University of Arizona. Bourhis practices law in San Francisco and Santa Barbara, California, using the degree he earned at UC Berkeley.
The two never married, but bore a child of Ohio State for which they never received any formal compensation or credit.
"It was just something (we) did. You do stuff and then it is what it is. We were never compensated for it," Lanyon said. "It just wasn't meant to be, but I think it's better that we didn't."
The two rode in Ohio State's homecoming parade in 2006, a rain-soaked weekend carrying a "Where's Brutus?" theme. Seat cushions, T-shirts and other commemorative trinkets are currently for sale as their "son" turns 50 this football season. Another home date against Minnesota — the team Brutus made his debut against — fittingly sits on the horizon Nov. 7, just over 50 years and a week to the day of his first appearance.
Brutus' imprint is palpable across the state of Ohio and even nationally. He won the 2015 UCA Division I Mascot National Championship mere days after leading the football team and Urban Meyer out of the AT&T Stadium tunnel and cheering the Buckeyes on to victory in the first-ever College Football Playoff. Scholarships are endowed in his name.
Quite a ways from the days of papier-mâché on a lawn outside a sorority house.
"I think after that first football game, I think we realized that this was going to be a mascot," Bourhis said. "It was never going to go away, but I don't think that we realized how big it was going to become."
