Comic Strips
Today’s the day to start. Joan is forcing me. John and Brendan have been anxious for me to get this started and put down some memories that I have. So here we go.
Joan was reading her WRITERS’ ALMANAC and was into some Charles Schulz material. I told her about a big poster of Snoopy done by Charles Schulz when he was at a newspaper convention with Esther and Boozy years ago. Charles Schulz had sketched this big poster and as part of the program they decided to give away the poster as a door prize. Esther won it. Of course, she was real hesitant to go up in front of the crowd to get it, but Boozy got her to go. Then she and Boozy got to know Charles Schulz pretty well. I remember seeing that big poster in Boozy’s office many a time when I went out there, and I’m sure that Jerry, their son, prizes that poster today. I can’t give you a date, but I know it happened back in the ’40’s or ’50’s.
This made me think of Milton Caniff who Boozy and Derby both knew when he went to Stivers High School in Dayton, Ohio, where they went. If I remember it right, they both thought he was quite a character. He was the creator of the comic strip TERRY AND THE PIRATES which we read every day when we received the DAYTON JOURNAL up in St. Henry as kids. Later on he created the STEVE CANYON strip.
I wonder if I ever told John and Brendan this.