Story of the Coast Guard Academy’s many mascots is bear-ly believable

Editor’s note: This story was drawn from the archives of The Day and the Coast Guard Academy Library.

At a time when bears are climbing into cars and entering homes around Connecticut, it seems strange that four decades ago, the staff of the Coast Guard Academy spent two days chasing one around campus. Not to shoo it away, but to catch it.

That bear was no random visitor. It was the academy’s escaped mascot, a 100-pound ball of fun named Objee.

In more recent times, Objee, who cheers on Coast Guard athletic teams, has been a guy in a bear suit. But back in the day, he was the genuine article, a black bear cub who attended games on a leash under the eye of a keeper.

A tradition for nearly a century, Objee was recently inducted into the National Service Animals Memorial Purple Poppy Hall of Fame. The NSAM, a nonprofit group, recognizes the work and sacrifice of service animals throughout U.S. history.

The honoree isn’t a single bear. There have been many Objees at the academy, and the necessity of swapping them out every so often is the central fact in their story.

That’s because playful cubs had a way of turning into great big grown-up bears, which made things interesting for those in charge of caring for them.

* * *

West Point had a mule, and Annapolis had a goat, so in 1926 the Coast Guard Academy decided it needed a mascot of its own. But the animal chosen to represent the school was one less easily domesticated. The reason for that had nothing to do with bears per se. It was because of a celebrated ship in the service’s past.

In 1897 a vessel of the Coast Guard’s predecessor, the Revenue Cutter Service, set out to rescue 265 whalers trapped by Arctic ice. Unable to reach them, the ship dispatched a relief party that traveled 1,500 miles overland to Point Barrow, Alaska, to deliver reindeer to the starving men.

The ship, which became famous, was the Bear, and in 1926 it was still in service. So the growing academy, which was fielding decent football and basketball teams for the first time, decided its mascot would be a bear cub.

Finding one wasn’t hard. On Nov. 15 that year, The Day reported that the academy was looking for a suitable animal, and the Associated Press picked up the story. Within days, officials were fielding offers.

A gentleman from Hartford named S.S. Hills had just what the academy was looking for: a 56-pound youngster available for $75. Hills had named the cub Objee, short for “objectionable.” That’s what his neighbors considered him, and anyone today who’s had to have an SUV reupholstered after a bear visit might understand.

Objee, who settled into his home outside the cadet barracks at Fort Trumbull, immediately tried to claw and bite through the door. A cadet named Adams went looking for an underclassman to serve as the bear’s “pilot.”

“It was noticed that all of the plebes were studiously avoiding Cadet Adams as he conducted his search,” The Day said.

At the state armory in New London, Objee was greeted with cheers when he made his debut at a basketball game. He was well-behaved, but two months later he tried to demolish a clarinet case belonging to a Coast Guard Band member.

By 1928 Objee (whose gender varied in different reports) was all grown up when a sailor decided to demonstrate how docile the bear had become by wrestling it.

“Even as the boatswain was boasting of the extreme gentility of Obje she sank her claws into his abdomen, in a playful manner, but inflicting sufficient injury to cure the boatswain once and for all of coming in personal contact,” The Day reported, using its own spelling of the name.

Not long after that, Objee was deemed too big to keep and packed onto the cutter Seneca for a one-way trip to a zoo in Washington.

The stories of most future Objees would end the same way.

* * *

Objee’s replacement arrived a few months later and was dubbed Objee II. He managed something no other mascot would achieve: He changed the course of Coast Guard athletic history.

One day in 1929, a Coast Guard boxer named Mickey McClernon went to feed Objee, but when he reached into the bear’s cage, Objee swung his paw and broke the man’s hand.

McClernon had been contending for a service welterweight title, but the injury ended his career. Instead he became the academy’s longtime boxing coach.

Objee II, not known for a sweet disposition, was later sent to a zoo in Springfield, Mass., and replaced with a 12-pound infant from North Carolina donated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Named Objee III to continue the dynastic succession, this bear, who loved honey, was never accused of being ill-tempered. But he lost his job for a different reason. When the academy moved from Fort Trumbull to its present home in 1932, no provisions had been made for a bear, so he was donated to a Groton animal farm.

But two years later, the academy went in search of an Objee IV. The bear that fit the bill had a more exotic pedigree than his predecessors. A staff member at the U.S. embassy in Turkey had captured two cubs on a hunt and was happy to donate one to the school. The new mascot resembled a teddy bear.

A highlight of his career was the time he broke loose and went for a swim in a gymnasium pool. He was also fond of wintergreen oil used by the trainers.

What happened after Objee IV’s departure isn’t clear, but there were no more bear mascots at the academy for a long time.

* * *

An Objee restoration came about in 1956 thanks to the Benson Wild Animal Farm, a zoo and amusement park in Hudson, N.H. Some cadets heard the farm was offering bears as mascots and persuaded the academy superintendent to accept one.

By then the school had a fight song called “Objee, Objee, Pride of the Coast Guard,” which was sung to welcome Objee V when he debuted at a football game.

This new era ushered in an important change. The problem the first four bears had posed by outgrowing their role was solved by a sensible policy. Each mascot would serve for a year while still a cub and then be replaced by a new arrival from the Benson farm.

The regular turnover meant there were soon emeritus Objees in zoos all over the place, including at Mohegan Park in Norwich and Bates Woods in New London.

A series of publicity photos from the ’50s and ’60s show Objees enjoying perks of the job: steering the barque Eagle, pecking at a typewriter in The Day’s newsroom and tackling a football player.

The cubs also fulfilled their unofficial duty of making life difficult for their handlers, escaping regularly and climbing trees until they were lured down with food.

After Objee XVI’s cage was found empty in 1973, he turned up 265 miles away, in Northfield, Vt. That was the home of rival Norwich University, which was about to face the academy on the gridiron. A raiding party from the school had spirited him away, but he was back in time for the kickoff.

The kidnapping of Objee became a ritual for a few years. Cadets retaliated by renting a plane and bombing the Norwich campus with eggs and computer punch cards.

At this point, the sequence of the Objeean line grows murky. Stories in The Day make clear that in 1975, the mascot’s throne was occupied by Objee XVIII. But three years later the paper reported that Objee XXVII was coming back for a second season. Two years after that, Objee XXV was introduced.

Those Roman numerals didn’t add up.

* * *

If ursine arithmetic went awry in the late ’70s, so did the longtime practice of getting a new bear for every football season.

In 1979 Objee XXIV had been around for three years and grown to a prodigious 385 pounds. Her daily diet included 10 heads of lettuce, three dozen boiled eggs, four quarts of milk and lots of apples and oranges, all washed down with bottle after bottle of maple syrup. She no longer fit in her cage.

“She’s really gentle, but she likes to play around and wrestle,” cadet Douglas Taylor said.

Three years later, Objee the Penultimate (No. XXX) met a tragic demise. She fell from a pole in her cage and landed on her head. A cadet in a bear suit was pressed into service for the next football game.

Which brings us to Objee XXXI, the last of his kind and one of the wiliest.

Shortly after his arrival, Objee rang in the new year of 1983 by climbing a tree in his enclosure and escaping. That prompted a pursuit by academy personnel that lasted the better part of two days.

Grape jelly and Baby Ruth bars were set out as a lure, but the bear grabbed the bait and took off. Frustrated officials then resorted to cruder methods that wouldn’t fly in today’s era of sensitivity toward animals.

With the bear still up a tree, the fire department sprayed water over his head. Objee just drank it. Then someone chopped down the tree, but the bear hit the ground running and went up another tree. When the limb he was on was sawed off, he was cornered by a fence and caught with a net.

After he briefly escaped again a few days later, Objee was sent for training to a New York farm run by a man who worked with performing bears. He returned nine months later.

“Objee has been learning how to behave, and we understand he has a good report card,” an academy spokesman said.

Then fate took a hand. In 1984, the state legislature passed a law that banned the possession of dangerous animals except in controlled environments like zoos. There was a grandfather clause, but because Objee had spent the winter in New York, he was not exempt.

Lawmakers hadn’t meant to target the Coast Guard and were almost apologetic that the academy would lose its mascot. But after the Objee XXXI drama, it was just as well.

Since then, the human version of Objee has been easier to maintain. He eats fewer heads of lettuce and hardly ever climbs trees.

j.ruddy@theday.com