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Cedar Rapids has plenty of colorful characters in its history, but one of the most enduring at McKinley never actually existed. His name? Percy Heavythinker.

The story begins in 1923, when McKinley Junior High (now STEAM Academy) art teacher Grant Wood (yes, that Grant Wood) was in charge of drawing profile silhouettes of every student for the school annual, the McKinley Mirror. When he ran out of real students to fill a row, Wood simply invented one. Thus was born “Percy Hevvythinker, Our Honor Man,” a model student who supposedly aced his classes, never skipped a day, and never once ran in the halls. Mischievous classmates, the yearbook explained, would do better to imitate him than to sti

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