|
|
'Eagle' Nickname & Mascot
The Eagle nickname and mascot for Boston College's teams were born through the eloquence of Rev. Edward
McLaughlin. Fr. McLaughlin, incensed at a Boston newspaper cartoon depicting the champion BC track team as a cat licking clean
a plate of its rivals, penned a passionate letter to the student newspaper, The Heights, in the newspaper's first year in 1920.
"It is important that we adopt a mascot to preside at our pow-wows and triumphant feats," wrote Fr. McLaughlin. "And why not the
Eagle, symbolic of majesty, power, and freedom? Its natural habitat is the high places. Surely the Heights is made to order for
such a selection. Proud would the B.C. man feel to see the B.C. Eagle snatching the trophy of victory from old opponents, their
tattered banner clutched in his talons as he flies aloft."
And so it was. The eagle was adopted as mascot and nickname that same year. The national attention that followed brought gifts
of two live mascots, from Texas and New Mexico, but neither bird found Chestnut Hill to its liking - one escaped and the other
injured its beak trying.
For some 40 years, the Boston College mascot was a stuffed and mounted golden eagle that resided in the athletic department
offices. But in 1961, a committee of students launched an effort to find a live Aquila chrysaetos to represent BC. Thus, the
era of Margo commenced.
Margo [a combination of the first letters of the school colors] was a 10-pound, two-month old female golden eagle given to the
University by a Colorado man in August 1961. For five years, the bird lived at the Franklin Park Zoo, attended every BC home
contest tethered to a sizeable perch, and even made the traveling squad for games against Army, Holy Cross, and Syracuse. Its
reign ended unhappily early in the 1966 season when it succumbed to a virus just before a road trip to Annapolis for a game
against Navy
|
|
|
