Who is Pete the Peacock, the mascot of UK’s first NCAA challenger?
.jpg "Pete the Peacock touches down recently at the Indianapolis International Airport with Saint Peter’s University President Eugene Cornacchia.")
The University of Kentucky men’s basketball team is set to face off against No. 15 seed Saint Peter’s University — the only school in the country to take the peacock as its mascot.
So what’s the deal with Pete the Peacock? We asked the folks at Saint Peter’s for the backstory behind this colorful character.
It’s connected to legends about a mythical, self-resurrecting bird
In December of 1930, The Rev. Robert Gannon, a Jesuit and then-dean, chose the peacock as the symbol of Saint Peter’s College.
The peacock, he believed, symbolized resurrection given it was said to have periodically self-immolated only to later rise from its own ashes more beautiful than before, a Saint Peter’s spokesperson told the Herald-Leader.
The truth, however, is a bit more complicated. The Rev. Thomas L. Sheridan, also of The Society of Jesus, clarified the peacock’s lineage in the following explanation, which he wrote in 1997 for inclusion in the student handbook:
“The peacock that [Fr. Gannon] had in mind was more properly the mythical bird also known as the phoenix. In Egyptian mythology the phoenix perished on a pyre every five hundred years and then rose rejuvenated from the ashes. Hence the early Christians adopted the phoenix as a symbol of Christ’s resurrection. Now in 1930, Fr. Gannon had just reopened the doors of Saint Peter’s College after they had been closed for twelve years, apparently for good. The College had ‘died’ during World War I in 1918, but it rose again out of the ashes.”
It’s named after a historic Dutch colonist
But that isn’t all to Pete the Peacock’s story.
Saint Peter’s University has its roots in downtown Jersey City.
According to Sheridan, that part of the city had originally belonged to a Dutch colonist by the name of Michael Reyniersz Pauw, and it was known as “the Land of Pauw,” Pavonia in Latin. A street near the college, Pavonia Avenue, is proof of this.
And what does pavo mean in Latin? Peacock.