When students saw Frank B. Eaton — a gun-totin' U.S. deputy marshal — riding at the head of Stillwater's Armistice Day parade, they knew their search for a new mascot was over. The cowboy and his spirited image was woven deep into the fabric of OSU by the time his cartoon image was officially sanctioned in 1984. “Pistol Pete,” patterned after Eaton of Perkins, Oklahoma, became the unofficial college mascot in 1923, replacing the Princeton Tiger.
