Bronze bulldog on guard at Citadel

Replica of mascot watches over remodeled stadium

Grace Beahm
The Post and Courier

Fred Ducker, who donated mascot Boo to The Citadel, stands under the new bronze sculpture created with funds from the Class of 1968. The statue, which resides at the newly remodeled football stadium, is modeled after Boo.

It's a lot of dog, and that's no bull.

The Citadel on Friday unveiled a new bulldog monument, a replica of Boo, the school's mascot. It stands outside the newly renovated Johnson Hagood Stadium on the corner of Hagood Avenue and Congress Street and protectively gazes toward The Citadel campus.

The bulldog, which stands 5 feet 5 inches tall but hits 10 feet standing on its pedestal, is likely the biggest one around.

South Carolina State University in Orangeburg also has a bulldog mascot, and has a large statue near the campus entrance.

"It's a pretty big bulldog," Maurice Washington, chairman of the school's board of directors, said of S.C. State's proud pooch. "It's intimidating, yet it could be anybody's family pet."

Washington had staffers measure the statue. But at 4 feet tall and 5 feet 10 inches from nose to tail, it just doesn't measure up to The Citadel's top dog.

"If they want to settle this in another way," Washington said, "the 2009-10

football season is right around the corner. We'll be more than happy to come down there" for a game.

Michael Hamby, a retired football player for the Buffalo Bills and the artist who made The Citadel's bronze bulldog monument, said it was cast in a foundry in Wyoming.

As it passed through Georgia on a trailer on its way to Charleston, University of Georgia fans thought it was that school's beloved mascot Uga, he said.

But it's a lot bigger than any bulldog on Georgia's campus. Uga's statue in Sanford Stadium is just over 3 feet tall, school officials said.

The Athens-Oconee Junior Woman's Club has scattered 36 artistically diverse, fiberglass bulldogs around Athens-Clarke County. But they all fall just short of 4 feet tall.

Yale University's Web site boasts that it was the first university to select a mascot. In 1889, it chose the bulldog Handsome Dan. After the original Handsome Dan died in 1898, it was stuffed and now is on display in a sealed glass case in one of the trophy rooms in Payne Whitney Gymnasium.

Yale officials said they have no bulldog statues on campus.

Chris Hoffman, chairman of The Citadel's Class of 1968, said that when his class decided to donate the new statue to The Citadel, members weren't thinking about building the biggest bulldog. They were, however, thinking about the monument being one of the most prominent things on campus.

"For years, people will be standing in front of it getting their pictures taken," Hoffman said.

Members of the Class of 1968 have a special bond with The Citadel and with each other, he said. They attended the military college during politically turbulent times in America. While many of their counterparts at other universities were "growing their hair long and smoking dope," many Citadel cadets were preparing to fight in Vietnam, he said. "It made a unique kind of bonding."

Hamby, whose work includes other mascots and large animal sculptures, said he spent nearly a year creating the bulldog statue.

The toughest part was "getting a little attitude on his face, a little snarl," he said. But he thinks he pulled it off.

Hamby left football after suffering an injury in 1989 and immediately began sculpting, the former defensive lineman said.

"I've taken my aggression from football to art," he said.

Reach Diane Knich at dknich@postandcourier.com or 937-5491.