Guest Column

Confessions of a costumed kamikaze /or/ The time in 1981 when a big, gawky, orange bird stole the show at an Iowa Hawkeye football game

The author is one of Iowa’s best-known and most successful entrepreneurs. He came here from his native New Jersey in the 1970s to join the Transcendental Meditating community around Fairfield in the southeast part of the state. In 1979, he founded the Great Midwestern Ice Cream Company and within seven years, their premium ice cream had been judged “best in America” by both People and Playboy magazines. After Gratzon sold that company, he founded Telegroup in Fairfield in 1989. It became an international long distance telephone service carrier that grew to 1,100 employees with $400 million in annual sales. After selling that company, he has been speaking, writing and consulting. Earlier this year, he authored and published the book “The Lazy Way to Success,” which Carla Offenburger reviewed last week on this Internet site. It’s a highly-acclaimed, hilarious and insightful book about how to become a high achiever – even a rich one – while having a ton of fun and treating those around you right. As long as I’ve known and read about Gratzon, I’d never heard about the caper he confesses to in this Guest Column until he offered it to us. It will give you a full appreciation and understanding of just what a promoter the guy is! —Chuck Offenburger

By Fred Gratzon
December 8, 2003
MAHARISHI VEDIC CITY, IOWA

Fred Gratzon

Why would Michael Jordan abandon basketball where he was king to play baseball where he was canned corn?

It happens every now and then that someone at the top of his or her profession leaves to start at Square One with something else.

Why? What is this logic-destroying disease – this intense psychological need to paddle upstream, this obsession to tackle a new challenge?

To the neutral observer, this type of digression makes no sense at all. Isn’t it easier and more lucrative to just go with the flow, to stay with a winning hand? There can be only one explanation – a man’s gotta do, what a man’s gotta do, if for no other reason but to get the gotta-do out of his system.

This story, which takes place in the fall of 1981, is about such a gotta-do. At the time, it seemed like an incandescently brilliant idea. But, then again, gotta-dos usually do.

Don’t ask why. There is no logical “why.” I just wanted a bird to be the mascot for my then-new company, the Great Midwestern Ice Cream Company, based in Fairfield and Iowa City.

Granted a cow would have made more sense as our mascot. And I did consider a cow briefly but dismissed the thought. While two people inside a cow costume could have choreographed some outrageously funny dance steps, two people would also mean twice the cost, twice the headache and twice the rehearsal time. Besides, who would want a career occupying the rear half of a bovine quadruped? For the record, I also rejected the idea of a one-person cow. The image of an udder on an upright biped was, with all due respect to the females of that species, disturbingly ambiguous.

As irrational as wanting a bird was, that was just half the story. The other half, which makes even less sense – I wanted to be that bird.

I roped a University of Iowa graduate student in the theater department to make me a bird suit. I was exceedingly particular, demanding artistic excellence and originality. I wanted attention to detail. I required a bald head, bulging eyes, flirty eyelashes, big beak, long neck, fat belly, skinny legs, droopy socks, blue suede shoes and lots of personality. I wanted my bird to exude humor, charm, sophistication and cuddleliness. The grad student came through big time. He created a masterpiece. Including materials, the whole project cost $600.

'Orange Herbert,' with Fred Gratzon at the controls.

A naming contest generated 747 entries. The winner received a year’s supply of ice cream and my company’s mascot was christened “Orange Herbert.”

The next step was going to be the easy part – make Orange Herbert famous.

I determined that the ideal launching pad should be the weekend when the University of Iowa Hawkeyes were hosting the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers in a titanic football clash. CBS with their alpha sportscaster Brent Musburger was going to broadcast the game, and it would be seen nationwide. In addition, this game was also going to precede the broadcast of a World Series game between the Yankees and the Dodgers so a particularly large audience was expected. What could be more perfect? Orange Herbert would make his debut on national television on a major sports-filled weekend!

Before I get too deep into the story, I need to describe “Herky,” the official mascot for the University of Iowa. Herky is a fiberglass snarling hawk’s head inside a huge football helmet. His body is nothing more than a black and yellow sweat suit with fringes. Ever since I can remember, Herky’s shtick consists of two basic moves – an index finger thrust skyward and a hand clap.

In a word, Herky is like ever other college mascot, bar none, boring. It was obvious that this nationally televised football game was clearly crying out for, ta da! Orange Herbert!

So I dropped it into gear and went to work. I first called the captain of the Iowa cheerleaders, described my mascot in enthusiastic terms, and asked if it would be alright if Orange Herbert joined the cheerleaders on the sidelines.

“Yeah, I guess,” the cheerleader stammered. “But you’d have to get permission from our faculty advisor.”

I called the faculty advisor, described Orange Herbert and then asked for permission to be on the field. The faculty advisor, not one to mince words, flatly said no. Undaunted, I called the Director of Ticket Sales, described Orange Herbert and then asked for permission to be on the field. She said no. I called the Assistant Athletic Director, described Orange Herbert and then asked for permission to be on the field. He said no. And finally I called the Athletic Director, described Orange Herbert and then asked for permission to be on the field. He said no.

Since Plans A, B, C, D, and E had fizzled, it was time for Plan F. Orange Herbert would go kamikaze-style.

Chip Gallagher, an ice cream aficionado and steady customer, volunteered to drive and dress me at the game. I definitely needed an assistant getting into and out of Orange Herbert.

We crammed everything into his car and took off for the game. Since we didn’t have tickets, we had to try to find someone selling them outside the stadium. Unfortunately scalper greed was pricing the tickets out of my range. However, immediately after the opening kickoff, scalpers dropped their prices precipitously. Chip and I were able to buy two tickets cheap. With a joyful sense of history in the making, we ran to his car to suit me up for the game. There he Velcroed me into Orange Herbert. He then put all of Orange Herbert’s traveling cases, along with my street clothes, into his car and escorted me into Kinnick Stadium.

I told Chip that since I wanted Orange Herbert to be a silent character that he’d have to do the talking for me to get me onto the field. Our strategy was to go down the aisle and then for him to help me as I climbed over the railing that separated the fans from the playing field. I told him what to tell the security guard if one tried to stop me.

Orange Herbert’s long, bulbous shoes flapped against the cement floor in the underbelly of Kinnick Stadium. We could hear the crowd erupting in cheers. Since everyone was seated, we didn’t have to navigate through crowds of people and were able to move quickly to the tunnel near our seats.

As one who has frequented stadiums from sea to shining sea, I’ve always enjoyed the contrast between walking underneath the stands where it is confined, cellar-like, dimly lit and ugly cement, to coming out of the tunnel to where it is super bright, green, crowded, expansive and bristling with energy. I was enjoying this contrast as I emerged from the tunnel when I was shocked by the realization that I was no longer an anonymous face in the crowd, but a gawky 6-foot 6-inch orange bird.

Showtime!

While Chip was all business in making his way unimpeded down the aisle to the field, I had to give high fives, hug ladies, steal hats, muss hair and sit on laps. I finally got to the bottom step and started to climb over the railing. A security guard immediately came over and Chip repeated his lines perfectly, giving them the appropriate tinge of urgency.

“Sorry we’re late,” Chip said breathlessly. “He just flew in from LA. He’s with Minnesota.”

The guard, overwhelmed with images of Hollywood, the World Series being in LA and the San Diego Chicken, and not wanting to interfere with anything Minnesotan, helped me over the railing.

The Herbert had landed!

I stepped onto the field and felt the raging hurricane of fan energy swirl around me – a feeling very different from being in the stands. My location was just behind a corner of the end zone. The cheerleaders and Herky, whom I wanted to cavort with, were exactly opposite. That meant circling the field either past the Minnesota bench or past the Iowa bench. It didn’t take much thought to make a decision. This being Iowa City, and the ice cream store I was keen on promoting being in Iowa City, and the customers I wanted to attract being Iowa fans, I choose to walk past the Hawkeyes and be associated with them.

Of course, when one is in a bright orange bird suit on the sidelines of a packed stadium, one cannot simply walk inconspicuously. I Mummer-Strutted, Twisted, Ponied, Mash-Potatoed, Popeyed, Freddied, Funky-Chickened, Boo-ga-Looed, Bristol-Stomped and Heisman-posed toward my ultimate destination.

It is a common experience that when one sense is deprived, the other senses grow in strength to compensate. Inside Orange Herbert, I looked out through a tiny mesh covered peep hole located at Orange Herbert’s Adam’s apple. It denied me all peripheral vision and visual acuity. My ears were encased in the foam padding inside Herbert’s neck. My sense of touch was sweating torrents, and all I could taste and smell was feathers. However, to compensate, I developed a heightened sensitivity to “vibes.”

I bring this up because with each silly step that took me closer to the Hawkeyes, I noticed a corresponding loss of joyfulness, playfulness, spontaneity, and ability and/or desire to be funny. I also experienced a precipitous increase in nervousness and apprehension. The epicenter of the Hawkeyes was head coach Hayden Fry. His larger-than-life presence was sucking all the humor out of the surroundings.

To him, what was taking place on the field was clearly not a game. And it definitely did not involve “play.” It was deadly serious business. This football contest was being conducted as if one’s worth as a human depended on the outcome. At this time and place, wars, violence, injustice, inhumanity, environmental degradation, crime, violations of human rights, starvation, illiteracy, disease and poverty were trivial considerations. This sporting event was all that existed and all that mattered. I am convinced that even if the full complement of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders formed a conga line and snake-danced through the Hawkeyes, no coach or player would have been distracted.

You don’t get to fully appreciate this level of intensity as a fan in the stands or from watching on television. You need to be right there on the sidelines, in the near total sensory deprivation of a bird suit, to get the full overpowering flavor.

(I had a similar experience a year later, when I had been invited to serve my ice cream to the U.S. Basketball Team when they came through Iowa City to play an exhibition game to tune up for the Olympics. Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing were on the team but still amateurs. When Bobby Knight, the head coach, came over to thank me, he shook my hand and spoke to me with such intensity, it felt like I was being reprimanded.)

Bob Dylan once sang the lyric “one should never be where one does not belong.” If ever a line of a song applied to a situation, this line fit this situation perfectly. I had to get away from that place before I lost the ability to laugh ever again. I abandoned all dance steps and made a beeline in the direction of the Iowa cheerleaders, who I noted were keeping a safe distance from Hayden’s Humorless Hawkeyes.

I think Herky was relieved to see me, although one could never tell by his face since his snarling expression is forever frozen in fiberglass. He had long since exhausted his index-finger-thrusting-hand-clapping repertoire, and was desperate for some new material. We ran toward each other, hugged, danced arm in arm, tangoed, sambaed, foxtrotted, frolicked, gamboled, pranced and otherwise horsed around. It wasn’t long before Minnesota kicked a field goal. I watched the ball sail through the uprights over my head.

As Minnesota lined up to kick off to Iowa, I fancifully thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if the ball came to me!”

The kickoff soared end over end, bounced on the 10-yardline, hopped to the 5, squibbed through the end zone and then took a gentle Sunday bounce in my direction. Hayden Fry may not have a game day sense of humor, but God clearly does!

Even with my restricted vision – like looking at the world through a gauze-covered keyhole – I saw the ball all the way. The center of Hayden Fry’s universe was nestled contentedly in my arms. The egg had come to papa!

But now what? While I had thought it would be cool to catch the ball, my fantasy hadn’t extended beyond the catch. I had no contingency plan. A powerful impulse flooded my brain.

Run. Run with the ball. Run with the ball into the teeth of Minnesota’s Doom’s Day Defense. Run with your skinny legs, droopy socks and bulbous 15-inch blue suede wing-tipped saddle shoes. Run and own the 66,000 fans in Kinnick Stadium. Run and be on national TV. Run and become a highlight on every evening news show in North America. Run and become a legend in college football.

Then sobering thoughts clamored in.

But you’re a gate crasher – uninvited and unwelcome. You’re already skating on thin ice just being on the field. Run and you’d further thumb your defiant, disrespectful, anti-authoritarian beak. Run and be arrested. Run and be arrested and, most appalling of all, get unmasked.

But it would be worth it. You’d be famous.

But it could be humiliating and backfire horribly.

I need more time – more time to weigh the pros against the cons. A split second would do it.

But time had run out. A severe looking official, who was all business and whistles and rules and black-and-white stripes and humorlessness, rushed up with his arms extended, demanding the ball.

Surrender the ball and all is lost, so run! No, don’t run! Run! No, don’t run!

I have been told that my kahonis have a pretty high brass content. And running onto the field toting the pigskin was certainly within their metallurgic range. But the underlying knowledge that, ultimately, I was really trying to build a respectable long-term ice cream business in this town, reduced some of their clank.

In a panicked compromise, I spiked the ball, did a Billy “White Shoes” Johnson knee waggle, struck some muscleman poses, moon-walked, and high-fived Herky. But deep inside, I knew I had squandered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Let us now, for a moment, leave our conflicted mascot and pay a brief visit to a multi-storied edifice that towers above Kinnick Stadium. Here is where the broadcasters sit to announce the game. Here is where the press sits. The university president has a suite in it where he or she entertains guests. The university’s foundation has a suite where they wine and dine donors. The athletic department has a suite where they bring the athletes they are recruiting. Well-heeled businesses buy suites for ungodly amounts of money to watch the games in climate-controlled, catered, comfort high above their less ostentatious brethren. I mention this place because also sitting in this structure were all the administrators who, earlier that week, after hearing a detailed description of Orange Herbert, denied him permission to be on the field.

And given my heightened sensitivity to vibes, I could feel each one of these administrators looking down on me and seething.

“Hey you!” came a shout from a nearby rent-a-cop. He had obviously just gotten his ear filled via his walkie-talkie from an irate tower-dwelling personage who was smarting from having his authority flouted. I pretended not to hear. “Hey you, come here!” he demanded again. I shook my head no. “I’m serious, man, come here!”

Little did I know that once-in-a-lifetime opportunities can happen within scant minutes of each other. They just take different forms. It occurred to me that I could now taunt the policeman and run away from him. If I could get the cops to chase me, I’d own the 66,000 fans at Kinnick and get on national television.

But this time, I was too emotionally spent to even engage in the internal dialogue. The metallic composition of my nether-regions had vanished. I had succumbed to Hayden Fry’s mirthless vortex.

The crowd booed the police as they escorted me off the field.

Now alone, I dejectedly walked through the catacombs of Kinnick Stadium until I found an exit. I headed for Chip’s car.

But Chip’s car was locked, and I not could get my street clothes. Realizing that he wasn’t coming until the end of the game, I had no other choice but to walk the two miles back to my downtown ice cream store in full avian regalia. Cars honked and every fraternity kid who drove by jeered “Nice legs!” as Orange Herbert made the long, humiliating, shtickless trek home.

Epilogue: Orange Herbert made several appearances, and within a year my ice cream was judged to be the best in America by People magazine. Given the deluge of media attention that followed that recognition, my company no longer needed Orange Herbert to promote it.

Orange Herbert is now retired, living in two cardboard boxes in a storage closet. There he contemplates what life would have been like if he had run with the ball.

My 15-year-old son, upon hearing the story, has said that my not having run down the field with that football is a blot on the family name.

Me? I too wonder what would have happened if I had run. It may even have brought a chuckle out of Hayden Fry. Okay, maybe not that, but it would have been hilarious nonetheless. And if it made Orange Herbert famous, much of my life would have been spent inside a bird suit, which is akin to wearing a down coat in a sauna bath. So from the point of view of my body’s homeostasis, it’s a good thing I didn’t run.

On the other hand, I still fantasize about routines and pranks I would like Orange Herbert to perform someday. I guess I haven’t fully got this particular gotta-do out of my system, which can only mean one thing…


Sorry for the length of this biographical note about the author, but it’s worth it. Fred Gratzon, 57, was born in Philadelphia and moved as a young boy to Moorestown, New Jersey, where he graduated from high school in 1964. He went on to Rutgers University, and in 1968 “graduated sine laude whatsoever,” as he put it, with a major in fine arts. He said his own athletic career “ended at 8th grade when kids started throwing curves. I could snag any fly ball but couldn''t pick up a hard grounder. In football, I was a sticky handed receiver, with fair speed and particularly good at separation, but my parents who had invested a fortune in my orthodontia forbade me to play. Since I still have my knees intact, not to mention my teeth, I forgave them long ago. Instead I played tenor sax in the marching band. I was 8th grade ping pong champ and played tennis through high school. Now I swim a half-mile every day. I also pretend I''m a golfer. Now I get thrashed regularly by Jake, my merciless 15-year-old son, in both golf and ping pong. He has a death ray for a forehand.” Of his wife, Shelley, Gratzon said, “I had to move to Iowa to meet a Philadelphia girl. She used to be a professor of art at Maharishi University of Management. She paints exquisitely. In fact, she does everything exquisitely. She is currently writing a vegetarian cookbook and I believe she has made a major breakthrough in the preparation of tofu, which, if the world is awake, should make her famous. When you come to Fairfield again, stop by for lunch. If you thought my ice cream was good, just wait until you taste Shelley''s concoctions. If it weren''t for the swimming I''d be a blimp.” Gratzon has long been “a rabid Iowa Hawkeye fan.” Did he ever meet Hayden Fry or former Hawkeye Athletic Director Bump Elliott after the Orange Herbert caper, to see if they remembered it? “I never met Hayden or Bump,” Gratzon said. “I wouldn''t know Bump Elliott from a bar of soap, and I''d be too afraid to meet Hayden.” He noted that he “did become friends with George Raveling,” when he was the Hawkeye men’s basketball coach. Raveling “ would bring recruits to my ice cream store. One day he brought B.J. Armstrong. While B.J. licked his favorite flavor, I asked what other schools he was considering. He said Notre Dame. I told him there is no way on Earth that South Bend had ice cream as good as mine, and that if he wanted four years of the world''s best ice cream, Iowa was the only place for him. In other words, my strawberry ice cream deserves full credit for B.J. becoming a Hawkeye. And before home games, George would see to it that the team ate my ice cream.” You can learn more about Gratzon and his new book “The Lazy Way to Success” at his Internet site www.lazyway.net And you can e-mail him at fred@lazyway.net

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