Back Home Where It Belongs

By: D. Scott Fritchen

On a drizzly, cool Thursday morning of April 25, 2024, Bobby Sloan steered his black F-150 into the Bed Bath & Beyond parking lot in Wanamaker Square in Topeka, Kansas, and shut it off after stopping beside a white Ford Explorer. Out stepped a man in his 70s who Sloan had never seen in his life. Sloan, a 42-year-old marketing director for Outdoor Bank in Manhattan, had labored for weeks for this grand moment. After introductions, Sloan said, "I was hoping this was real." The man laughed.

The man opened his rear driver's side door and pulled out a large piece of canvas bound in old twine. He undid the twine and unrolled the canvas to reveal what Sloan refers to as the "one of one." And there it was. The one-of-a-kind lost piece of history. The gem went missing from the historic Ahearn Field House in April 1971, disappearing without a trace. Gone. Poof. And now, here it was, in plain sight. The man re-rolled the canvas, which remained in fair condition. Not bad, Sloan thought, for an item stashed away for 53 years.

The artifact meant little to the man, who was now unburdened by it yet will forever remember that day that the piece of canvas was placed in his possession.

Sloan carefully placed the canvas into his F-150 and began the hour-long trek back to Manhattan, a thousand thoughts racing through his mind, ones that he had shared only with his wife along this solo journey, and he smiled a big smile. A satisfying smile.

He had recovered the beloved Willie Wildcat logo.

Willie Wildcat hung on the edge of the press box located high above the seating at Ahearn Field House. The hand-painted Willie Wildcat — a cartoonish purple wildcat head with red accents, a distant cousin to William Hanna's animated star, Tom the cat from Tom and Jerry fame — served as the engine for a train of letters that followed upon a banner. The letters spelled out: "EVERY MAN A WILDCAT," and at the end of the banner read, "1963."

"That logo represents all that Kansas State basketball is about," says Lon Kruger, who attended K-State basketball games as a child growing up in Silver Lake before starring for the Wildcats (1971-74) and coaching the Wildcats (1986-90). "Shoot, Ahearn Field House, the old dirt floor that the court sat on, the clock that wound down and confused the opponents, that logo hung above all of that. Very, very special memories."

Ahearn Field House officially sprang to life on December 9, 1950, as the fifth largest fieldhouse in the United States with a capacity of 14,000, and it was the envy of every Big Seven Conference school. The Wildcats won 378 games, including six undefeated home basketball seasons, inside Ahearn Field House between 1950-51 and 1987-88 — its final year of use for basketball. The facility was synonymous with basketball excellence but was utilized for other sports and events — the most famous being when Martin Luther King Jr., delivered a speech on the topic of "The Future of Integration" on January 19, 1968. It was King's final speech on a college campus before his assassination on April 4, 1968. A photograph from King's speech in Ahearn Field House shows King standing behind a podium with the "Every Man A Wildcat" banner on full display in the background.

"I think that photo has resonated with K-Staters because it represented so much that was taken away," GoPowercat.com publisher Tim Fitzgerald says. "What a great period it was, and how the banner disappears, and Martin Luther King Jr., is tragically taken — that photo encapsulates the past of Kansas State University so well."

Sloan began his quest to recover Willie Wildcat shortly after viewing a short video titled "Daily Delivery: Ahearn's Every Man a Wildcat banner has been located after 60 years," commentated by Fitzgerald on December 14, 2023. In the commentary, Fitzgerald notes that a man attempted to sell the Willie Wildcat logo on Twitter, then quickly deleted the tweet upon perhaps realizing that he was attempting to sell stolen merchandise.

"Some guy had popped up apparently trying to sell part of that banner," Sloan says. "I thought, this would be something else, this would be my big Indiana Jones moment if I could get my hands on it and bring it back — 'It belongs in a museum!' That's what I felt like. So, I wanted to go and see if I could dig this thing up. It didn't feel like it was a real shot, but I thought it deserved a shot."

Sloan labored diligently to locate the man on social media, eventually gaining his trust, and they communicated — "a couple weeks of digging and negotiations," Sloan says — before the man finally agreed to meet Sloan and return the Willie Wildcat logo.

Willie's home.#EMAW👌 pic.twitter.com/JLScigI7a2
— K-State Athletics (@kstatesports) November 14, 2024

Now standing in the parking lot of Bed Bath & Beyond, the man told a story. It was the spring of 1971-72. College baseball. A rain delay. Some players from the opposing team journeyed to the K-State Student Union. A handful of them decided to slide into Ahearn Field House. They spotted the "Every Man A Wildcat" banner hanging with old twine in front of the press box. Bingo. One of the baseball players climbed up and untied the twine and the banner fell to the floor in the field house.

"I was told by the guy I acquired it from that each letter of the banner was cut up and distributed amongst the players and some of their friends, scattered to the wind, never to be seen again," Sloan says. "But Willie remained. Willie was still there. And that's what he had. He was one of the original guys who were a part of that caper back in the early 1970s.

"It was just an innocent prank like any other school would do, but he had Willie, and he had it the entire time. He left it in his basement through all the moves, through all the things that he did."

Sloan pauses.

"He agreed with me that after 60 years it was finally time for Willie to come home."

Kansas State University Athletics

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