Paul Brown, Obie and the true origin of Brownie the Elf

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is the last of a two-part series on my search to find the true origin of Brownie the elf, the longtime caricature logo of the Browns. You can read Part I here.

By STEVE KING

Did you ever misplace your car keys?

Of course, you have. I have. We all have. It’s part of life – a part that makes us want to pull our hair out, to be sure, but an important part nonetheless because it teaches us valuable lessons.

When we finally find those keys, they’re in an obvious place that we never bothered to look because … well, because it was too obvious of a place. Come on, it was never going to be there. Why would we waste our time?

So, we keep looking in the same wrong spot, and it still isn’t there. What do they say about the definition of insanity being “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?”

Then, after we finally look in that most obvious place of all, there are the keys. They were there all along.

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We slap ourselves in the forehead, shake our head and say, “It makes total sense that they would be there. We could have saved ourselves a lot of time and frustration if only we would have kept our search simple and logical.”

That’s exactly what happened to me in my search to find the origin of Brownie the elf, the Browns’ caricature logo that dates all the way back to the beginning – actually, just before the beginning – of their first season in 1946. I am absolutely certain that I have finally found the real story of how Brownie came about, and why, when and by whom.

But before I go any further, I have to make it clear that it wasn’t me – all by myself – who found the answer after looking for it for about 16 years. Actually, it was through the efforts – and help — of four other people who led me to it. All I had to do was connect the dots. That was the easy part.

And, oh, yes, none of this would have happened without the help of a higher power. I call Him God – you might call him someone, or something else – but whatever the case, the moment he put into my head the right thought – the one I had been looking for so as to enable me to make the proper connection — it jump-started a search I had given up on long ago, and immediately gave me the long sought-after answer. All I had to do was find evidence to support that answer, which I was able to do in less than 24 hours. That was the fun part, the cool part.

So, without further ado, here’s the answer:

Brownie the elf was created and brought to life because of the efforts of … (drum roll, please) Pro Football Hall of Famer Paul Brown, the founding general manager and head coach of the Browns.

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Like finding the car keys, thinking that Brown was the guy responsible for Brownie made total sense. Why I didn’t look at him in a different light and figure it out right away, concentrating my search on him, is kind of a “well, duh?!” moment on my part.

Everything – every single, solitary thing — about the early Browns was tied to him. He was the one who built the organization piece by piece from scratch, so much so that the team is named for him. I have written, and said, a million times that Brown called “The Father of Modern Football” for all the innovations he brought to the game. As such, then, it makes total sense – there’s that term again – that he would have also come up with one of the coolest sports caricatures there is in Brownie, who, like Brown himself, is still relevant today, all these years after the fact.

I also failed to recall, in another “well-duh?!” moment, that Brownie was so closely tied to Brown that when Art Modell purchased the team in 1961, his very first order of business, as he said, was “to get rid of that little (gender slur).” By beginning to work to get Brownie off team apparel and equipment, and off promotional literature, Modell was trying to wrest control of the Browns from Brown and make them his own. He knew this was an important step in that process.

As such, then, it was obvious that Brownie was not just any ol’ caricature. Hardly, he was Brown’s own creation, so how better to disrespect the coach than by separating him from not just something from his coaching career with the Browns, but also from the beginning of his coaching career overall.

But all this eluded my decision-making process because, just like the car keys, I was looking for Brownie in the wrong place. I should have made my search Brown-centered.

As I mentioned at the end of Part 1 of this Brownie the elf series, radio icon Paul Harvey used to say, “And now the rest of the story,” when he would get to the final part of the interesting tales he used to tell his coast-to-coast audiences for decades. So, here’s the rest of the Brownie the elf origin story, and, just as Harvey did with his tales, the best has been saved for last.

I was writing what I thought was the end of Part 1 of this Brownie the elf series – actually it was to have been the only part of the story, for I never intended to do the Part 2 that you’re reading here – and I got to the part about the responses I received when, in a clevelandbrowns.com story, I asked for help in finding the origin of Brownie. One response that had always stuck in my mind – possibly because it involved Massillon, a city near and dear to my heart because my hometown is located just 10 miles from there and I also have a lot of relatives who live there – was from a guy who grew up in Massillon and said he remember seeing an a big ad painted on the side of a building there for a brand of soda pop.

“The ad had a little guy who resembled the Brownie elf,” the man wrote,

Unfortunately, I could never collaborate his story, so I just dismissed it.

I have always had a mental picture of what that ad may have looked like, and as I recalled all that while writing Part 1 of this Brownie series, I had what I would call an epiphany. I believe with my heart that such things, which come out of nowhere, are sent from God.

Anyway, I shouted to absolutely no one – I was in a room all by myself – “It’s Obie! He’s where Brownie the elf came from! It’s the Paul Brown connection!”

Obie (the first two letters of his name being the initials for orange and black, the school colors) is the longtime caricature logo/mascot of the Massillon High School Tigers. He’s the little tiger wearing a leather helmet, an “M” letter sweater and a big smile on his face as he’s running and carrying a football. In my humble opinion, no logo/mascot in high school sports not just in Ohio, but in the whole country, is as cool as Obie, and it’s not even close.

Obie is carrying the ball in his left paw, and extending out his right paw to stiff-arm would-be defenders.

From the very start, when he first appeared in an ad for tickets for the Browns’ first regular-season game in 1946, and for the rest of the home contests, Brownie has always, when shown running with a football, held the ball in his left arm and had his right arm extended out to stiff-arm would-be defenders.

“Yes, that’s it. Obie is the same as Brownie,” I said to myself, quietly this time.

Why didn’t I figure that out long before this?

OK, whatever. But now I had to prove it.

I went online to see when Obie, the caricature, was “born.” He wears 1930s football gear, so I figured it was sometime during, or around. that decade. That made sense because Brown, who moved to Massillon when he was 9 years old and played quarterback for the Tigers in the early 1920s, was head coach at his alma mater from 1932-40, turning the school into a national power before going on to Ohio State and guiding the Buckeyes in 1942 to their national championship.

So, if Obie was born during Brown’s coaching tenure at Massillon, which I thought had to be the case, or at least prior to late August 1946, the time of that ticket ad, then it was possible that he inspired the creation of Brownie.

But I could find no mention of the lineage of Obie, the caricature (there is also a costumed Obie mascot), and I needed that.

I called my friend, Nancy Miller, who is a Massillon lady – and a Tigers football fan — through and through after growing up there and graduating from Massillon High. She also knows everybody in town. If anyone would be aware of the date of Obie’s unveiling, it would be her.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Ugh.

She quickly added, “But I may be able to find someone who does know.”

She put the question on Facebook. It resulted in two key connections, with Massillon football experts Dave Strukel and Scott Shook.

A communications professor at Hiram College, where the Browns held training camp for 23 years (1952-74) (his room is the one Brown used as his office in training camp), Strukel is the son of Mary Strukel, who led the drive to get an image of Obie as a choice to be included on Ohio license plates.

Shook, now retired, is the author of “A Century of Heroes,” the definitive history book of Massillon High football (Available on Amazon).

Strukel gave me a lot of good information but said he has looked for years for the date of Obie’s first appearance and, like me, couldn’t find it. His mom probably knew the date and may have needed it to work with the state on getting Obie on the license plates, but she died several years ago.

Meanwhile, Miller texted me a screen shot of the response she received from Shook on Facebook. He wrote that Obie started showing up in ads for a Massillon company, Tyson’s Roller Bearings, in the 1940 Massillon souvenir football programs. Obie was later adopted as the school’s caricature mascot.

The 1940 season was, as mentioned, Brown’s last at Massillon, so it’s possible that he would know personally about Obie.

Ding, ding, ding! Bingo! Bingo!! Bingo!!!

That’s exactly what I needed. That was the missing link.

I didn’t shout this time. I just gasped.

Paul Brown. Yeah, Paul Brown.

I should have known.

Also, according to Shook, Obie was likely drawn by a well-known Massillon artist of the time by the name of A.D. Small. Small and Brown were apparently friends. Small crafted a great drawing for a huge plaque that was given to Brown to commemorate the coach’s first state championship at Massillon in 1935.

Could Small have also crafted Brownie, at least in the early years? It’s possible, but I guess we’ll never know.    

But getting back to Brownie, I never thought I would find the answer, because the people who knew his story had probably taken it to the grave. However, through nothing short of a small miracle — a perfect storm, in you will — Shook, Strukel and Miller were, graciously, leading me down a rare window into the past, a hallway so narrow that my elbows were rubbing against either wall as I walked.

It was allowing me to gather information I thought was lost forever. It was the information that gave me peace, allowing me to, by finding Obie’s lineage, solve the lineage of Brownie, thus ending my long search and adding another piece of history to the Browns and Brown. Brown, the Browns and Massillon have always been indelibly linked, and now the connection is even stronger, in part because it has two new ties with Brownie and Obie being clones of one another.

I couldn’t be more grateful to Nancy Miller, Keith Shook and Dave Strukel. Again, they did all this, not me.

Now for the thing that started all this, the epiphany I got when thinking about the Brownie-like character on the soda pop ad on the side of the building in downtown Massillon years ago. The man who contacted me at clevelandbrowns.com about the ad, and what was on it, was right on target.

Some internet research turned up the fact that Brownie Caramel Cream Root Beer did exist, and still does in a way. The drink, which featured a Brownie-looking elf on the label (the face is a little more human-like and a little less elf-like than Brownie), was produced beginning in 1929 by the Atlas Beverage Co. of Detroit. Atlas went out of business in circa 1996, but Orca Beverage, which bills itself as a leader in the production of retro sodas, still carries it.

I think I need to buy a four-pack. It would serve as a good memory of all this.

Could it be that the Brownie-like elf on the Brownie bottle inspired the name of the Browns’ Brownie the elf? Sure, it is. It’s another possible, even plausible, connection that just makes sense.       

Thank you to that man, whomever he was, who made the suggestion to me. He played a huge role in this, too. Without his suggestion, there would have been no epiphany, and if there had been no epiphany, there would have been no renewed search for Brownie by me and the elf’s lineage would have forever remained a mystery.

With all that, then, I should have done a better job of investigating his claim.

And one more thing: I need to apologize to all those people to whom I gave incorrect information while they were on the public tours of what was then known as Cleveland Browns Stadium. When they asked me about the lineage of Brownie the elf, I gave them the story that connected him to the first team owner of the Browns, Arthur “Mickey” McBride, his love of Notre Dame, the Fighting Irish leprechaun caricature and the Brownie girl scouts.

Wow, was I wrong!

But it was the best information I had at the time. Now I have not just better information, but the right information. I’m sure of it. The connections are too strong. They all line up, fitting together like puzzle pieces.

“Your evidence is all circumstantial, but it would stand up in any court,” Shook said.

I’ll take that any day.

And that’s the rest of the story.

Now, where in the world are my car keys? Oh, I know where I’ll look, in the most obvious place they could be.

It just makes sense.

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