Dodo

From USAFA Folklore

The Dodo is the sometimes-banned, often-censored, but universally loved (OK, maybe not quite) cadet humor magazine. The Dodo staff is part of Cadet Wing Media.

[edit] Dodo History

The Dodo, as you can well imagine, was born from the cadet desire to flaunt authority in a humorous and irreverent manner. It started in 1957 and its initial "Chairman" (what the editor was called then) was John Reeves, Class of 1959 (today an engineer for SCA in Albuquerque). Other distinguished members of the Board were Brad Hosmer, '59 (who would later become a Rhodes Scholar and the USAFA Superintendent), Dick Lee '59, (somewhere in Wisconsin), and George Burch '59 (who resigned as a 1st Lt and lives somewhere in MA). Other members of '59 who were associated with the Dodo included Jim Reed, and Mike Murphy.

By 1957, the Dodo was a fixture of cadet life but the powers that be attempted some form of control by assigning the Deputy Commandant, the legendary Colonel "Bent Wing" Ben Cassiday, as the Officer in Charge of Dodo. Hector Negroni even wrote a couple of articles, during his tenure from 1957 to 1961, under the pen name "Spanish Flyer". In 1961, after publishing four issues the Dodo was disbanded. It was reborn again in 1962 under Pat Wynne '63 (KIA in SEA 1974), and by 1967, the Dodo was in full swing under OIC Bobbie Grace.

In the 1990s limits placed on the Dodo by officer censors became so extreme a group of graduates created an Internet site called The eDodo in 1997 with the slogan "Online and Underground." Cadets, graduates, and other interested parties contribute to the eDodo.