Richland High has a mascot for the first time, and it’s soaring into history

Chris Morano is leaving a legacy at Richland High School.

While others may break scoring, rushing or passing records, Morano did something others have struggled to do for years.

He became the school’s mascot.

Now “Archie” and his creator Morano are in the running for a $3,000 prize as one of eight other mascot finalists nationwide in the Varsity Brands School Spirit Awards. The decision is expected in May.

“For me that was really awesome,” Morano told the Tri-City Herald. “Not only am I the very first Richland High Bomber, but the first year ... I became a finalist as the national mascot of the year.”

It’s an achievement for a school that has struggled with finding a way to represent its logo and its team name on the field.

With its ties to the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb, the school changed the name of its team from the Beavers to the Bombers in 1944. The mushroom cloud logo has been both unique and controversial.

That made finding a mascot through the years a challenge, said Jim Qualheim, director of activities, in a letter recommending Morano for the prize.

“We have never had a mascot because no one could ever agree on what the ‘Bomber’ mascot would look like, “ Qualheim said. “Debates over the years have dealt with ideas such as a bomb, a nuclear fallout cloud, a bomber airplane, even a beaver from a previous school name.”

The answer came from one of the high school’s other icons.

The mural of the Day’s Pay, which was added at the school on 1993. The B-17 bomber was funded by people working at Hanford donating a day’s worth of pay. It flew 69 missions over Germany.

It just took a high school senior with the drive to revive the legacy.

How to go out as a bomber

Morano began his time at Richland High School playing football, but a big hit his sophomore year left him with a concussion.

The injury meant he couldn’t play for the rest of the school year. When he returned, he didn’t feel like he was good enough to continue on the team.

Telling the coach that he was leaving the team was one of the hardest decisions he ever had to make, he said.

He still wanted to do something for the school, but he wasn’t interested in other sports. In March 2019, he was talking with his father about it.

“I said, ‘We never had a mascot, so maybe we should do that,’” he said. “I brought it up to a couple people at the school and they said that would be really cool.”

Then last summer, Morano found a discounted costume of a World War II era bomber, and the plan started into motion. He brought pictures of the costume into a meeting with Principal Tim Praino.

The principal directed Morano to the spirit adviser, who explained all of the problems the district had dealt with with picking a mascot.

“I said, ‘What if we were the bomber pilot? That’s not controversial,” he said. “That’s honoring the actual pilot.”

While Morano initially thought to name the mascot “Richie” after Richland, his adviser suggested picking a name from the crew of the Day’s Pay. When they settled on Charles “Archie” Purcell, they had a hit.

Purcell was the ball turret gunner on the Day’s Pay bomber, and was on hand when the mural was dedicated in 1993.

Morano added more touches to the costume before making his debut on the Richland football field this year. He got a new Bomber jacket and pilots gloves and had the jacket embroidered.

Learning to be a mascot

Morano soon learned the challenges of being a costumed mascot. He needed help navigating because it is hard to see out of the large head of the costume. It’s a challenge most mascots face, he learned.

And the suit was much hotter than he expected. He tried a cooling vest, he soon found it was too heavy.

The cheer coach was a friend of the wife of a former Seattle Seahawks mascot, so he received some tips from him.

“He told me to ditch the water weight.” Morano said. “It does cool you down a little bit, but eventually, it’s all going to melt and you’re going to get even more sweaty.”

The perks of being the school’s mascot far outweighed the drawbacks, he said.

He was on the sidelines for each of the football team’s home games. He participated in cheers and pumped up the crowd, and he loved the feedback he received.

“That was so fun,” he said. “The way that the students interacted whenever I did a funny expression, they’d always laugh ... that was probably my favorite part about it.”

Another highlight came when he was introduced at his first game. They school used a bomb siren, and then introduced him as the Richland Bomber’s mascot.

“I was so relieved when people were happy with that,” he said.

More than a school mascot

Morano’s father reached out to the Purcell family with a video of the mascot, and received a message from three of Purcell’s grandsons, one of his daughters and his wife.

They called the tribute amazing, and it brought a tear to their eyes. They thanked them.

“It was very heartwarming,” he said.

For now, Archie is taking up a spot in Morano’s home, but he plans to leave the costume with the school. He already plans to work with his cheer coach to help pick the next person to don the head.

It was a task he was honored to take on, he said.

While he’s planning on moving onto either WSU Tri-Cities or Central Washington University, Morano is not sure if he’ll try to be a mascot for a college team.

For now, Morano hopes the legacy of Archie lives on long into the future.

“It would be amazing to come back an see a new Archie,” he said. “If Archie’s legacy lives on for 20 years, then I will be a very happy man.”

This story was originally published February 24, 2020 at 5:00 AM.