The community and school in Martin celebrated a fascinating piece of history Friday night with homecoming, a football game and a tribute to an unusual mascot.
Though known today as the Clippers, they were known as the Onion Kings more than 80 years ago after a contest to select the local legions’ nickname. The celebration Friday attracted a huge crowd, perhaps leading Martin officials to plan an annual local festival around this nod to heritage.
I first heard about the Onion Kings story from Wayland Globe printer Robert Riedlinger in the mid-1970s. He played for Wayland in football and basketball in the late 1930s and noted among the opponents were these Onion Kings.
It was just a few years ago that Hopkins athletics historian and booster Lee Dale “Pete” Arnsman recalled that Superintendent Al Deal, who later became famous as commissioner of the MIAA, put a stop to the Onion Kings as Martin’s mascot and forced the local district to change it to a more respectable Maroons, from 1951 to 1957. Finally, it was decided that Martin would be known as the Clippers, and that has stuck for the last 62 years.
Legend, and Arnsman, have it that in 1937 a contest was held in which local citizens were allowed to vote by putting money in a jar. The nickname with the highest monetary support would get to decide.
Arnsman told me there was a well-to-do farmer with the last name of Leep who stuffed the jar with a $10 bill, a huge amount in those days of the Great Depression. So Mr. Leep chose Onion Kings because so much of the area’s muck farming yielded onions.
I asked Martin Township Supervisor Glenn Leep if any of his ancestors were in on this. He said he wasn’t sure, but he wouldn’t doubt the Leep influence in the story.
So I’ve been told that head football coach Brad Blauvelt spearheaded an effort to honor Martin’s heritage with a homecoming celebration. And he urged everybody to call the local gridders Onion Kings instead of Clippers just for one festive day.
The result was a local celebration that would rival any other small town festival. As I said earlier, perhaps the summerfest-style observance should be turned into a fall harvest festival themed with onions, in tribute to days gone by.
Radio station WKMI in Kalamazoo reported, “The school and the district has been around for over 130 years but this week, they are ‘peeling back the layers of history’ of their athletic heritage and become the Onion Kings once again.”
Small town America is known for quirky and loveable festivals. Martin should do this again, and blow it up even bigger.
I am searching this legend of the onion kings. There is still some people around they may know the story I do know for sure that the dates of the onion kings were 1943,1944 and 1945. There has got to be more of this story somewhere in Gun Swamp.