PHOTO: MALCOLM RYDER '76, COURTESY PAMELA WESSON '76
Martha (“Marty”) Paxton Franchot ’77 contacted PAW to identify herself as the “long-lashed Tigress” pictured with a thoughtful Fred Fox ’39 in PAW’s Feb. 8 From the Archives photo. As a freshman, Franchot asked the then-Tiger — a male senior — why the University didn’t have a woman portraying the school’s mascot. He loaned her his costume, and Franchot cheered as Princeton’s first Tigress at a Cornell football game in 1973. Since the Tiger suit was much too large for her, Franchot appealed to Fox for a costume. He loved the idea, got funding, and presented Franchot with the Tigress costume. She wore it to football, basketball, and hockey games until junior year, when she passed it on to a freshman woman.