Sparty almost ended up in the trash. Cyrus Stewart prevented that, and launched a legacy
EAST LANSING — It's been 60 years since Cyrus Stewart walked into Spartan Stadium as Sparty, but he bears physical proof that he was one of the very first students at Michigan State University to portray the mascot.
"Give me your finger," Stewart, 82, said Wednesday afternoon, his voice echoing off the high ceiling inside the west lobby of Spartan Stadium. Just a few feet away stood the original Sparty statue, unveiled in 1945 and moved inside the stadium in 2005.
He points to his own nose, "Put your finger right in there. Can you feel the dent?"
The obvious dent is at the bridge of Stewart's nose, where the mouth of the more than 4-foot-tall, 30-pound, fiberglass Sparty head rested when he wore it during football games from 1959 to 1963.
"The problem was it was so damn heavy," he said. When Stewart was running onto the field its mouth would slam back into the bridge of his nose repeatedly, he said.
"So many times when I came out of the game I'd have two black eyes."
That was the price he paid to be Sparty — long before the mascot's outfit was redesigned and became much lighter and safer to wear. Stewart, who went on to teach at MSU for more than 50 years after he graduated said taking on the role was a seminal experience, worth every bump and bruise.
"I think Sparty represents everything that's good about Michigan State," Stewart said.
Over the mascot's 68-year history, the students who have portrayed him have said being Sparty was, and always will be, bigger than any of them.
The mascot is, without a doubt "one of MSU's biggest hype men," said Caeden Hunter, 21, who portrayed him for four years before graduating this spring.
Hunter's time as Sparty is separated from Stewart's by six decades but Hunter feels the same about the mascot's significance. Sparty is about so much more than sports, he said: "The excitement that follows him is something that's really cool. He's a big pillar of the MSU community."
Taking on the mascot early on
The same mystery and anonymity that surrounds students who portray Sparty today cloak some of the finer details of the mascot's early years.
Theta Xi fraternity brothers Donald Pais, Kenneth Roberts and Don Bauer made the first Sparty head in 1955. Constructed of paper-mâché and 6-foot-tall, it weighed 60 pounds, according to MSU's website.
The fiberglass head came a year later, and in 1959 Stewart was a freshman at MSU, a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon and moving into the fraternity's new house in the 500 block of M.A.C. Avenue with other members. The fraternity that had occupied the house before them was moving out, and had the Sparty head, Stewart said.
"Anybody want this?" he remembers one of its members asking as boxes were hauled out of the house.
While Stewart's fraternity brothers were noncommittal, he wasn't.
"Nobody seemed to say much about it and I'm jumping up and down in the corner saying, 'God, yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.'"
"I knew exactly what it was," Stewart said.
So did key figures within MSU's football program.
At the first game Stewart attended as Sparty, then-head football coach Duffy Daugherty tapped him on the shoulder.
"Glad to see you," he told Stewart. "'Welcome to Spartan athletics.'"
Stewart knew that by wearing the head he could score "about three to four free tickets" to every Spartan football game.
He was right. Stewart and a few of his fellow fraternity brothers would transport the Sparty head to football games, he'd put it over his head and they'd walk right in.
"I would come in and mess around with the band and so on and so forth until the game started," Stewart said. "At halftime, I'd put it back on again. When the game was over I'd put it back on again until we got out to the car and then take it off and we could drive it back to the house."
Eventually, officials with MSU's marching band program offered to transport the Sparty head to away games.
"Over the years, Sparty became something else," Stewart said. "Every time I put that head on, I was carrying Michigan State University. This is the symbol of Michigan State."
'Sparty is absolutely a part of who I am now'
Sparty has evolved from when Stewart was a one-man show making sure the beloved mascot made appearances at games.
By the 1980s, the mascot became the responsibility of the MSU Alumni Office. Students have been behind Sparty since its beginning and still are, keeping their involvement in the university's Sparty program a secret until they graduate.
These days, Sparty attends athletic games, local and on-campus events, weddings and more. Students who take on the role, and who have included both men and women, have to audition first.
Hunter, who grew up in Grand Blanc, studied biochemistry and molecular biology at MSU. He minored in theater.
Being Sparty is intimidating at first, Hunter said, but it's a role you grow into.
"Sparty is absolutely a part of who I am now," he said. "Sometimes I still find myself, in my day-to-day life, acting like him. I'll be like walking somewhere and I'll realize that my hands are clenched because that's how Sparty walks."
Fellow 2023 MSU graduate Avery Tilley, 22, who grew up in Texas, portrayed Sparty, too.
"I didn’t even totally understand what I was getting into," he said of the decision to audition, but the enormity of being MSU's mascot becomes clear to everyone who takes it on.
"You're always trying to make sure that you are Sparty," said Tilley, who earned dual bachelor's degrees in fisheries and wildlife, and genomics and molecular genetics.
"He’s definitely a bit of a tough guy on the outside, but he has a sense of humor," he said. "You have to embody that MSU spirit because he's still supposed to be an MSU student. He knows how to be classy, too."
When Tilley was posing as Sparty for a photo he usually smiled, even if no one could see it: "I realized it was because I was sharing in these people's happiness and compassion and I wanted to be a part of that."
The role taught him how to communicate with people, often complete strangers, without saying a word, he said.
READ MORE:
Could alcohol be sold at Spartan Stadium this season? Here's what would need to happen
As fans of YaYa's chicken look for alternatives in Lansing, here are 5 eateries to try
Sparty's legacy
Stewart tried out for both the university's tennis and swimming teams with no luck when he enrolled, he said.
Sparty gave him a way to belong, and to leave his mark at MSU.
"...Sparty was a way in which I could say to myself that there was something that I did and that in some way I may have preserved him, that he is going to be there forever. It's a very deep feeling."
He became a professor in the university's Department of Social Sciences. Stewart and his late wife Nancy, who he met at MSU, raised three children, all of whom attended MSU. He retired about a decade ago and lives in East Lansing.
Being Sparty was central to his experience at MSU, Stewart said.
"I think it's solidified in me a deep love for Michigan State. I don't think there's any question about that," he said.
Doug Stewart said his dad's role as Sparty wasn't common knowledge around their house when he was growing up. He didn't discuss his father's legacy with him at length until about a decade ago.
Sparty's honorable attributes are shared among every student and alumni, Doug Stewart said.
"When I think of Sparty, I think of the fact that we're all Sparty," he said. "Anybody, at one time or another, is helping somebody else."
MSU has done tremendous things with Sparty since he vacated the role decades ago, Stewart said, but at the core, the mascot still symbolizes the same things.
"He's not complex. He's not a professional. He's the man and the woman and the children that you meet on the street that are the backbone, the heart of what we are," he explained.
Contact Rachel Greco at rgreco@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @GrecoatLSJ .
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Sparty almost ended up in the trash. Cyrus Stewart prevented that, and launched a legacy
