The story behind Trenton Thunder’s mascot, Boomer
By Dan Aubrey
I was thinking about baseball, and what I as an arts writer could add to the tradition of writing about the sport, when it hit me: I could write about the art of creating a mascot. Not just any mascot, but Trenton Thunder’s own Boomer.
And after some digging and collecting info, I found myself sitting with artist and mailman William Pae talking about the real life events that went into creating — sorry to break the illusion — a human-made creature.
“I’m an artist,” says William Pae, “I worked for Cybis Porcelain for 20 years.”
Cybis was a Trenton industry that produced fine hand-made porcelain collectibles. The company’s name came from Eastern European artists Boleslaw and Marja Cybis. They moved their successful three-dimensional collectible art studio from New York City to Trenton in the 1940s when the area was still a pottery center that included Lenox and Boehm.
Cybis today is just a company showroom at 5 Norman Avenue, Trenton, but for Pae it is the place that enabled him to develop the skills that would help him create the mascot. But that comes later.
“The Franklin and Danbury mints killed the business,” says Pae, noting how the hand crafting team of artisans at Cybis could not compete with the companies producing less expensive collectibles in the 1980s.
When the company moved the major its art producing studios from Trenton, Pae took advantage of the civil service preference afforded through his GI benefits, joined the Postal Service, and was assigned to Morrisville.
Pae — born and raised in Hamilton by a Congoleum and Vahlsing Produce Factory employee father and a stay at home mom — says he got the art bug from his brother.
“Painting in the basement is my earliest recollection of doing art,” he says. “My older brother Sonny started to draw Disney characters on the basement walls after they were whitewashed. I would imitate him and got hooked. I used to copy every comic book I could, Disney, Superman, and, then, Playboy cartoons. I got really good at that, and guys would want me to make a drawing and then put their girlfriend’s faces on the bodies. I made $10 or so for each one. It was my gas and cigarette money,” he says.
Pae took high school art classes at Hamilton High and credits teacher Robert Wood for opening a life for him. “Mr. Wood would take us to Montclair and other colleges to see art departments. But I came from a poor family. There was no way I was going to college. He told me to go see this guy at Cybis and ‘get your foot in the door.’ He wrote a letter to Cybis and was the one who get me in.”
Pae’s fledgling career, however, was interrupted by the being drafted into the army and serving only two years, released for a medical reason.
When he returned to Trenton he returned to his art. “I started as an apprentice in the mold shop and eventually became a designer. I did circus stuff, clowns. I also did story book things.” He also married and had a son, Todd. He’s important to the story.
Of those days Pae says, “It was the perfect studio. Everyone knew one another. And everyone was working on the same thing. Cybis was a fun place. We had deadlines and it was serious, but we worked together to get things done.”
Pae smiles as he lists the names of people connected with Cybis: “Justice Hughes’ wife, John Wayne, and Agnes Moorehead. We sent stuff to the pope. When the presidents traveled, they would come to Cybis or Boehm and ask for gifts. There was the swan that Nixon took to China. I didn’t design it, but I worked on.”
With the drive to create and advance, Pae said that he took up researching and looking for ideas. He also took art classes at Trenton Junior College, the former Trenton School of Fine and Industrial Arts, and studied drawing and sculpture.
The extra studies led to his ability to move up the ladder. He became a designer and created some of his favorite Cybis sculptures, including “Rumbles the Clown.” “It’s an image of my son and our dog,” he says.
It was a good time that did not last. As Boehm, Lenox, and Cybis moved from the city, Pae took advantage of the GI Bill and moved to the post office.
Yet Pae’s urge to create characters and caricatures remained. “When I was working for the post office, I did caricatures of baseball players. People enjoyed it,” he says, adding that he would give them away or sell them for a modest price when coworkers insisted.
Then came something big and booming.
“My son (Todd) went to college in Miami to play baseball,” says Pae. “He then worked for the Phillies in Clearwater in 1993, the year the Phillies were taking off. He got a chance to come up here. The Phillies brought him up. In the meantime the Thunder contacted him. They needed help, and he got a job at Thunder as a business operations manager. He dealt with concessions, parking, printing, and things.”
Pae says that one day his son asked, “‘Dad, can you come up with a mascot?’ And I had it knocked out in two days.”
The mascot “had to have a bird’s head, that’s part of the logo,” Pae says, “but I wanted to make him a happy character. When I first did him, I had his legs a little heavier. But everything was the same: his face, his hat, his belt. Did you ever see any of the Disney characters? Mickey Mouse has big feet. I always try to keep it the way the Phillie Phanatic is. He has character and everyone loves him. What kid doesn’t like big feet and a big head?”
The process that created Boomer is connected to both Pae’s drawing in the basement and his experience at Cybis. “When you’re doing a character, stay with the character, yet keep it very simple. There was an artist at Cybis who looked out the window. It was snowing, and in the snow was a white bunny. The designer just said, ‘snow ball’ and started creating a piece that made loads of money for Cybis.”
Pae also came up with the mascot name, connecting the weather condition with sports. “It just came to my mind, ‘Boomer’ Esiason,” the nickname for Norman Esiason, retired NFL quarterback and television sports commentator. His mother gave him the name because he was constantly kicking in the womb.
“I stayed in the frame of thunder and boomer,” Pae says. “To me it was obvious.”
Boomer was not the only design considered. Once the word got out that the Trenton team was looking for a mascot other artists submitted designs, including a living baseball bat, a walking glove, and a two-headed bird.
But Pae’s love of caricatures, understanding of three-dimensional popular figures, and drawing happy cartoons tipped the scales, and Boomer was born. “When you do something like this, this is for kids and family. This is not a competition. The only thing (the Thunder management) gave me for my original drawing was $250. But I didn’t do it for money; I did it for my son.”
Just don’t tell him — or anyone else.
This story originally ran in U.S. 1 Newspaper in 2013.
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