by Michael Broerman ‘15
We live amongst many legends here at Saint Ignatius, but none are as tantalizing as the wildcat on the wall of the Sullivan Gym. Something that makes it such an interesting legend is first of all the fact that it is NOT even a wildcat. There has been a Bengal tiger on the wall of Sullivan Gym since the early 1980s and the vast majority of the students at Saint Ignatius do not even know why. According to Mr. Hennessy ‘78, legend has it that “during Father Styles’s term as President, Pater [Styles] painted the ‘wildcat’ on the wall of the gym with students. As you could imagine, Pater was not the best artist so Pater projected the tiger onto the wall, and proceeded to trace over it.” However, all of this is just urban legend, no more reliable than the rumors circulating about an undercover police officer posing as a sophomore.
An interview with the man, the myth, and the legend Father Kenneth “Pater” Styles, S.J., revealed that Mr. Hennessy was in fact correct. “If my memory serves my correctly,” jokes Styles, “when I came back from tertianship in 1979, I was asked to be athletic director. Now that’s a stretch, isn’t it? I explained that I had no skills in that area, but nevertheless the school still wanted me to do it.”
One of the first jobs Styles was tasked with was repainting the decrepit Sullivan Gym. So Styles set out with Tom Pasko, who he had named co-athletic director, to find a team to revamp the Sullivan Gym. “There were maybe three students or so who helped me; that’s the best I can remember. The students worked at school at the end of the day to help pay for tuition.” So Styles now had the task and the team, and the only thing he lacked was a design. “The gym had not been painted in years; it was a shade of rose or dark pink, parts were painted light green to match the tiles. I decided to paint everything a white or cream color. The Poster ‘Cats were the ones who had the poster of the wildcat. Really it is a tiger, but then a tiger could be considered a “wild” cat, and at that point in our history we were not all that concerned about biological precision.”
It would be a little far fetched to believe that our own Father Styles with a team of high schoolers painted a ferocious Bengal on the wall of the gym freehand. “I took a picture of the poster and then put scaffolding on the visitor side of the gym. I hauled an opaque projector to the platform on top of the scaffolding. After the drawing projected to the correct size for the wall, I outlined the drawing in pencil on the wall. After that, we filled in the correct colors using the poster as a model.” So there you have it, folks, the undisputed truth about the Sullivan “wildcat” from the artist himself.
So if this artwork were such a piece of Ignatius history, and the product of the hard work of one of our own Jesuits for over thirty years, why would we take it down not even a year after his departure?
“To set the record straight,” proclaims Principal Bradesca, chatting in his office, “we were talking with Father Styles last year about changing the wildcat even before he announced his departure. The decision was in no way a bon voyage to the ways of old. The gym had been the same for over thirty years and we felt a change would do us good.”
Even Father Styles was surprised by the longevity of the Sullivan “wildcat.” “Nothing lasts forever,” says Styles. “Considering the inaccuracy about the wildcat, it was on the wall a long time.” In fact, it was commonplace for Benedictine students to say that Sullivan was their house because it had a Bengal on the wall and not a wildcat.
So change is in the air once again at Saint Ignatius, as early as this coming spring, the gym will be redecorated with the school shield painted on the wall, the image selected by the students in a poll run by the Eye. But the change will still honor Father Styles’s legacy of student participation. “The new wall will once again be painted by students, but they will be able to add their own spin on the shield,” reveals Bradesca.
“One of the leading ideas is painting the Cleveland skyline behind the shield, and for every state championship adding a star to the night sky. It would be impossible to satisfy alums from every era, so we decided to leave it up to this generation.”
