Purple prose finds KU home

The sweet treats were an instant favorite. Soon Pittaway, c’72, and Dunn, b’73, had devoured the entire batch, only to make a shocking discovery: At the bottom of the tin, in bold purple letters, were the words “Every Man a Wildcat!”

“We laughed,” Pittaway recalls. “I called my mother and said, ‘What is this?!’ She said, ‘Well, your father went to Kansas State and I figured that you ought to have a reminder of that in your cookie tin.’”

Pittaway stored the treasure with other KU mementos until his mother passed away in 2015, when he gave it to Dunn. The two friends recently donated the purple-tinged tin to the KU Memorial Union, where the jaunty hand-painted Jay will be a welcome addition to more than 1,000 mascot figurines and memorabilia in the Jayhawk Collection on the second floor—as long as no one peeks inside.