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By Sherry Bithell - Virginia Tech Magazine: Fall 2002 When looking at the history of Virginia Tech's unique, much-beloved HokieBird, one has to wonder: Which came first, the turkey or the Gobbler? Where was the idea for Tech's world-famous mascot hatched? And why a turkey? Just who is this international bird of mystery? Turkey timeline To find the origins of the HokieBird, we must first take a gander though the mists of time, back to 1896. That's the year cadets from the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College (VAMC), as Tech was known then, began taking a Blacksburg youth named Floyd "Hard Times" Meade to school sporting events, where he entertained crowds with his antics. By 1907, Meade's popularity had so grown that the athletic teams adopted him as an official mascot. Also in 1896, the school's name was changed, with "and Polytechnic Institute" added to the VAMC moniker. The new name, which was often abbreviated for the sake of convenience to "Virginia Polytechnic Institute" or "VPI," invalidated the former school cheer, which ended with the line, "Virginia, Virginia, A.M.C." A contest to find a new cheer produced O.M. Stull's (Class of 1896) winning, "Hoki, Hoki, Hoki, Hy; Techs! Techs! V.P.I." Stull later admitted that the word "hoki" had no meaning--he'd merely used it as an attention-getter. It worked. After his cheer was adopted, "Hokies," along with "Techs" and "Polytechnics," was used as a nickname for the athletes. Things changed again, however, in 1908, when the nickname "Gobblers" reportedly was first used to denote VPI athletes. The origins of the name are still hotly contested, although The Bugle's Echo relates a few popular theories. One holds that the cadets would yell "Coni-a-ah" at the football players, who would reply with a resounding turkey gobble. Another is that after VPI's 1907 Thanksgiving Day football victory over the University of North Carolina, a group of cadets returned to campus bragging that Tech "took the turkey." The most widespread tale, however, attributes the nickname to an observer's comment that the athletes "gobbled" their food. Regardless of the true story, VPI athletes were first referred to as Gobblers in print in 1909, and a scant three years later, the nickname had become part of the VPI lexicon. The nickname most likely led to the school's first feathered mascot. In 1913, Meade began taking to games a huge turkey gobbler that he had trained to pull a two-wheeled cart and to flap its wings and gobble when prompted. Although President Eggleston nixed the cart pulling, calling it "cruelty to animals," Meade continued to train turkeys and take them to games through 1929. The students were loyal to their turkey mascot, and in 1914, when the VMI bulldog attacked it at a game, the entire corps reportedly catapulted from the bleachers in the gobbler's defense. Meade, a Tech employee, eventually passed on the turkey torch to another staff member, William Byrd "Joe Chesty" Price, who faithfully raised the birds and took them to games until his retirement in 1953. At this point in mascot history, the turkey trail grows cold at least until 1962, when the ancestor of the modern-day mascot first peeked out of its shell.