To the editor:
There are some subjects in Lenox that feel like a hot stove. Mention them in the wrong setting and suddenly everyone has a strong opinion.
That happened to me over Easter lunch in Taghkanic, N.Y., with friends from Great Barrington. Earlier, we had all met up in Lenox to see “Under the Sea” at Lenox Memorial High School, which was terrific. We were still talking about how much talent and energy the students brought to the stage when I mentioned that the school district is considering changing the high school mascot.
“The mascot is the what?” one friend asked.
“The Millionaires,” I said.
That’s when another friend chimed in, confirming it: “The Lenox mascot is a millionaire. Like, the Monopoly man.”
Someone laughed so hard they nearly snorted food out their nose, and the whole table lost it. Then came the comment that was meant as a joke, though not entirely: “Eat the rich.”
And there it was. The Lenox Millionaires.
This week, as a Lenox resident with a child in the Lenox school district, I received a survey in the mail presenting three options: keep “Millionaires,” change it, or “I don’t care.” On one level, it may seem like a small question. On another, it asks something larger.
Thinking about the Millionaires mascot, I do not want to sound like some woke culture warrior trying to erase history or tear down every last statue of the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts. But there is a difference between remembering history and making it our mascot. Is a legacy so tied to class division really something we want to hold up as aspirational? Or is it holding us back more than we admit?
If “Millionaires” now sounds too dated or tone deaf, then maybe inflation deserves a mention. A million dollars in the 1900s would be worth roughly $40 million today. So should we update the mascot and become the Multimillionaires? There are other directions Lenox could go, but each raises its own questions. There is Native history worth acknowledging here, just not as a mascot. “Minutemen” has historical grounding, but it feels gendered, a little predictable, and overused. My wife likes “Elephants,” which I cannot entirely dismiss, but the fact that we end up in these strange places may itself be the point. Maybe wealth is just an odd thing to build a mascot around.
I am wary of cutting one more thread that ties current students to Lenox alumni, especially at a time of tightening budgets, growing uneasiness among some residents about funding education, and renewed murmurs about regionalization. Once a town starts loosening its hold on the identity of its high school, it is fair to ask where that road ends. Is this just a mascot debate, or one more step toward closing the school and sending Lenox kids elsewhere?
Patriots and Minutemen may sound safer, and Elephants may sound cuter, but all of them feel more generic in the end. There is only one Millionaires mascot. However imperfect the name may be, it is unmistakably Lenox.
Steve, my neighbor and a member of Lenox’s only boys’ basketball state championship team in 1974, put it better than I could: “When the opponent mocked our name before a game, our collective unspoken response was, ‘Really? We are going to kick your ass and you will always remember the Millionaires.’” That is not just branding. It is memory, pride, and identity. It reminds me a little of Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” and the line “It’s that name that helped to make you strong.” A name does not have to be comfortable to be yours.
In the end, this is probably where it belongs: with the students, teachers, and parents who are part of the school right now. They are the ones being asked to vote this week, and they are the ones who have to live with it. Whatever they decide, I just hope it comes from real thought, not reflex, and that it reflects both respect for Lenox’s history and some clarity about where we want to go next.
Michael Lucia
Lenox
Click here to read The Berkshire Edge’s policy for submitting Letters to the Editor.
