Globe Gazette
Mason City, Cerro Gordo County, Iowa
May 26, 2005

MASON CITY — Things have changed a lot here in River City during the last 40 years, but the little guy in the snazzy band uniform with his head tilted back as he toots away on a trombone hasn't.

Mr. Toot is the mascot not only of the North Iowa Band Festival, but also for Mason City as a whole. His image has appeared on everything from T-shirts to business cards to city light poles.

The first Mason City resident to make his acquaintance was Jack Leaman.

"He's an old friend of mine," said Leaman.

Leaman came back to his hometown of Mason City in 1966 to be the city's first-ever planning director.

Dennis Orvis, who was the Mason City Chamber of Commerce manager at the time, was always saying the city needed a logo.

Leaman mentioned this one night at a Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. One of the commission members, Murray Lawson, who owned the Klipto Looseleaf Co., invited Leaman to come look at some of the commercial artwork books at Klipto for ideas.

It was in one of those books that Leaman found a little marching band that included a trombone player whose square jaw and horn-rimmed glasses seemed strangely familiar.

"It looked to me like Meredith Willson," Leaman said.

Willson, Mason City's most famous son, was a flute player, not a trombone player. But one of the most beloved songs from his best-known work, "The Music Man" is "76 Trombones." So Leaman thought the fellow with the puffed-out cheeks would be the perfect image to represent the city.

"Dennis and I thought we would take this little guy and get business cards made," he said.

Soon the Chamber staff, the city staff, the mayor, council members the Planning and Zoning Commission members and staff all had business cards with the trombone player on them.

According to articles in the Globe Gazette archive, the image also began appearing on Mason City Chamber of Commerce envelopes and even on a brochure used in teacher recruitment by the Mason City School District. The Chamber held a contest during 1967 to name the trombone player. The winner was Janice Bowman, who dubbed him "Professor Toot." At some point the name got changed to "Mr. Toot."

In 1973, some bigger-than-life Mr. Toot figures were placed on downtown light poles for that year's Band Festival. The figures appeared again at Christmastime. Although this custom died out, one of the figures is still on display at the Kinney-Pioneer Museum.

In 1986, there was a proposal to update Mr. Toot's appearance. Globe Gazette readers were asked to weigh in on the idea. They were overwhelmingly against it.

"Why not change Mount Rushmore, Mount Vernon, the Statue of Liberty?" one anonymous reader wrote.

So in the end, Mr. Toot remained the way he was.

"It's one of those things. It stuck," said Rosie Hussey, of Mason City, former Band Festival coordinator.