The last word on Pete the Penguin of 1968

Jambar editors — old and new — stick together.

The ink was barely dry on last Sunday’s Vindicator when Richard Louis Boccia, managing editor of The Jambar, Youngstown State University’s student newspaper, sent me an e-mail answering my question about what happened to Pete. Pete was a live penguin who arrived on Youngstown State University’s campus in March 1968, when I was a Jambar editor.

The Vindicator reported Pete’s arrival, but our files did not say what happened to the little Humboldt penguin, which was bought from the Pittsburgh Zoo and installed in a pen that was built for him outside the library.

At the end of a column about the night that necessity required Pete to stay in the basement of a house I shared with others on the North Side, I noted that: “Pete was supposed to spend the summers at the Pittsburgh Zoo ... I like to think that one summer he just decided to stay in Pittsburgh, but my gut tells me things didn’t end that happily.”

Boccia sent a 1972 clipping from The Jambar reporting:

“Pete the Penguin, official YSU mascot, is dead at the age of eight.

“According to a post mortem released by Dr. James H. Swart, a veterinarian of the Department of Parks in Pittsburgh, Pete died of visceral gout with secondary kidney damage. Visceral gout is a symptom of old age in penguins.

“Pete, who was born and raised in the Pittsburgh Zoo came to YSU in 1967 (sic). He traveled with both the basketball and football teams to all the scheduled sporting events.

“Pete was buried in a vault in the backyard of his keeper, Henry Dalverny, a junior art major, in Bulger, Pa.”

Bulger is in Washington County, Pa, a little south of Route 22, about midway between Stuebenville and Pittsburgh.

Pete may or may not have been 8 at the time of death. I talked to my college friend, Frank Braden, for the first time in 35 years or so. He’s living in El Paso, Texas, retired from hospital administration and doing fine art photography now. In 1968, he was a member of YSU Student Council and he recalls going to the Pittsburgh Zoo to pick up Pete for the first time. It was pretty much a matter of the first penguin the keepers caught went to Youngstown. His age at the time could, at best, be estimated.

Frank also recalled that Dalverny was a lucky catch for student council and a devoted keeper. He was not surprised to learn that Pete had been buried in Dalverny’s yard.

My attempt to located Dalverny was unsuccessful, as were those of Brian Brennan, a librarian at the Maag library at YSU, who did some research on all the Pete mascots the university had over the years as part of YSU’s centennial observation.

A well-behaved bird

A couple of photographs I‘ve seen since last week show that Dalverny and Pete got along quite well. One showed Pete standing patiently while Dalverny adjusted a harness and leash the penguin wore while on the sidelines at football games. Another shows a toddler at a basketball game examining Pete from a distance of only a foot or so, while Dalverny gently holds the bird with one hand.

While Pete’s cause of death could be associated with old age, it’s hard to say he died of old age. A Google search shows, a Humboldt penguin’s life expectancy is roughly twice that, on the low end.

It seems unlikely today that any university would countenance buying a penguin for a mascot. I can’t imagine a zoo corralling one and turning it over to a college student to take to a campus 70 miles away.

But, I was reminiscing about the ‘60s. Sensibilities change. Contrary to the impression taken by a few readers of last Sunday’s piece, Pete was not mistreated. He was given water and, at proper intervals, food. We chose not to invite him into the living room or kitchen for obvious reasons, and he came to understand that. We weren’t brutes (to use the word of one particularly incensed writer) and, although he was not as socialized as he became under Dalverny’s care, Pete was smart enough to retreat to the basement, stake out some territory and settle in for the night.

Thanks to all — well, almost all — who e-mailed, including some old college friends. And thanks to Boccia, who had the answer to my question about Pete at his fingertips because he had recently researched what he worked into a funny April Fools’ Day piece reporting that Pete the Penguin had been replaced as the university mascot by Rusty the Abandoned Steel Mill. It may not have had quite the edge to it as The Jambar’s “Questionable Merit” awards in 1968, but it has the advantage of not getting the university sued. That’s another story, and one I tend not to retell.

X Mangan is editorial page editor of The Vindicator.