A natural, or rather a family bias added to my enjoyment of Mark Bernstein ’83’s excellent cover article, “Behind the Stripes,” about the generations of Princetonians who have played the role of the Tiger mascot. Our family will always be proud of how Fred Fox ’39 was the first person to don a tiger skin and march in as a member of the band. He loved to tell that story, as it included the generous creativity of his father, who got him the costume at a New York City furrier for the 1936 home game against Yale. But he would sometimes also tell a not-so-glorious sequel: the 1937 game when he tried to do the same thing in New Haven. That game was played in a downpour. And when my father left the very wet costume at the Princeton Club in New York for the furrier to pick up, he was not charged the $15 rental fee, but its total cost (of $178.50) as the owner deemed it “ruined beyond repair.” The damaged tiger suit turned into … a lawsuit! It eventually got settled in what my father called “an initiation into adulthood.”
And a P.S. about the Nov. 14, 1936, game: The Pathe newsreel of it contains about 10 seconds (out of almost four minutes) where one can see the Tiger cavorting on the sidelines. But perhaps only real Fox and Tiger fans will want to watch that!
A natural, or rather a family bias added to my enjoyment of Mark Bernstein ’83’s excellent cover article, “Behind the Stripes,” about the generations of Princetonians who have played the role of the Tiger mascot. Our family will always be proud of how Fred Fox ’39 was the first person to don a tiger skin and march in as a member of the band. He loved to tell that story, as it included the generous creativity of his father, who got him the costume at a New York City furrier for the 1936 home game against Yale. But he would sometimes also tell a not-so-glorious sequel: the 1937 game when he tried to do the same thing in New Haven. That game was played in a downpour. And when my father left the very wet costume at the Princeton Club in New York for the furrier to pick up, he was not charged the $15 rental fee, but its total cost (of $178.50) as the owner deemed it “ruined beyond repair.” The damaged tiger suit turned into … a lawsuit! It eventually got settled in what my father called “an initiation into adulthood.”
And a P.S. about the Nov. 14, 1936, game: The Pathe newsreel of it contains about 10 seconds (out of almost four minutes) where one can see the Tiger cavorting on the sidelines. But perhaps only real Fox and Tiger fans will want to watch that!