|
Home | Forums | Gallery | Register | Video Directory | FAQ | Members List | Calendar | Games | Search | Today's Posts | Mark Forums Read | Chat Room |
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Bill Mauldin, of WW II Fame of Willie & Joe, died today
Bill Mauldin, of WW II Fame of Willie & Joe, died today
Comment on the passing of Bill Mauldin His contributions to GI's psyche & sense of humor can never be adequately gaged.. My WW II Marine Father, really loved you.. thank you Bill, and God speed... our prayers for your family...(s) "ColonelDan" Dan Cedusky, Champaign IL Posted on Wed, Jan. 22, 2003 Bill Mauldin, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, dies at 81 NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. (AP) - Bill Mauldin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist who portrayed World War II reality laced with humor, died Wednesday. He was 81. Mauldin, one of the 20th century's pre-eminent editorial cartoonists, died of complications from Alzheimer's disease, including pneumonia, at a Newport Beach nursing home, said Andy Mauldin, 54, of Santa Fe, N.M., one of the cartoonist's seven sons. ``It's really good that he's not suffering anymore,'' he said. ``He had a terrible struggle.'' His characters Willie and Joe, a laconic pair of unshaven, mud-encrusted dogfaces, slogged their way through Italy and other parts of battle-scarred Europe, surviving the enemy and the elements while caustically and sarcastically harpooning the unctuous and pompous. They were the vessels that Mauldin, a young Army rifleman, filled with wry understatement to portray the tedium and treachery of war, entertaining and endearing himself to millions of fellow soldiers in the war and to Americans at home. ``He had powerful helping influence on people with his sense of humor,'' Andy Mauldin said. ``Whatever you are going through, it helps if you can find something to smile about.'' In his classic book ``Up Front,'' Mauldin wrote that the expressions on Joe and Willie are ``those of infantry soldiers who have been in the war for a couple of years.'' ``If he is looking very weary and resigned to the fact that he is probably going to die before it is over, and if he has a deep, almost hopeless desire to go home and forget it all; if he looks with dull, uncomprehending eyes at the fresh-faced kid who is talking about all the joys of battle and killing Germans, then he comes from the same infantry as Joe and Willie,'' he wrote. Mauldin called himself ``as independent as a hog on ice,'' and his nonconformist approach brought him a face-to-face upbraiding from Gen. George Patton. Mauldin continued to draw what he wanted. In 1945, at age 23, his series ``Up Front With Mauldin'' won him the first of his two Pulitzer Prizes for editorial cartooning. Mauldin won the second in 1959, while he was an editorial cartoonist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, for depicting Soviet novelist Boris Pasternak saying to another gulag prisoner: ``I won the Nobel Prize for literature. What was your crime?'' Mauldin wrote and drew 16 books and acted in two movies, including John Huston's 1951 production of ``The Red Badge of Courage'' starring real-life war hero Audie Murphy. Mauldin was born in Mountain Park, N.M., and spent much of his life in the West. A teacher in high school helped him nurture his art talent, and he attended the Academy of Fine Art in Chicago, learning from such teachers as cartoonist Vaughn Shoemaker, a Pulitzer Prize-winner for the Chicago Daily News. Mauldin enlisted in 1940 and, assigned as a rifleman to the 180th Infantry, started drawing cartoons depicting training camp for the Division News, the newspaper for the 45th Division. Once Mauldin's 45th Division shipped overseas, Stars and Stripes, the servicewide newspaper, began publishing his drawings. Author David Halberstam wrote: ``One senses that if a war reporter who had been with Hannibal or Napoleon saw Mauldin's work he would know immediately that the work was right.'' After the war, Mauldin freelanced for a time. He joined the Post-Dispatch in 1958, then switched to the Chicago Sun-Times in 1962. It was at the Sun-Times that he drew one of his most poignant and famous cartoons on the day of President John F. Kennedy's assassination. The drawing showed a grieving Abraham Lincoln, his hands covering his face, at the Lincoln Memorial. In recent years, as Mauldin battled Alzheimer's, thousands of veterans, widows and other well-wishers have sent him letters, offering thanks and stories of survival. ``You have managed to capture the irony, double standards and outright insanity of Army life,'' one man wrote, ``in a way that allows us to laugh at ourselves and our leaders and keep moving forward in the face of adversity.'' He also had a steady stream of visitors who had fought in WWII. ``They tried to pay him back for support he had given them,'' Andy Mauldin said. The campaign to recognize the cartoonist was sparked by veteran Jay Gruenfeld, who spent years wondering what happened to the man who had made him laugh in a foxhole under fire. He sought out Mauldin and then wrote to veterans organizations and contacted newspaper columnists urging people to remember him. Mauldin is survived by former wives Jean Mauldin of Los Angeles and Christine Lund of Santa Fe, N.M.; sons Bruce, 59, of Dallas; Tim, 57, of Los Angeles; Andy, 54, of Santa Fe; David, 51, of Santa Fe; John, 49, of Albuquerque, N.M.; Nat, 48, of Los Angeles; and Sam, 16, of Santa Fe. His former wife Natalie Mauldin died in 1971. His daughter, Kaja Mauldin, 20, died in 2001. Funeral arrangements were pending, with burial planned in Arlington National Cemetery. Sempers, Roger United We Stand God Bless America Remember our POW/MIA's I'll never forget!
__________________
IN LOVING MEMORY OF MY HUSBAND SSgt. Roger A. One Proud Marine 1961-1977 68/69 http://www.geocities.com/thedrifter001/ |
Sponsored Links |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
I'm really sorry to hear that Bill Mauldin died, for some reason I guess he'd go on forever.
My cousin was in Europe in WW2 and I bought all of Mauldins books for him, the cartoon he loved and laughed at the most was when Willie and Joe are looking at a farm house without a roof, there are bomb holes all over the fields and his trees were badly damaged. Willie says to Joe "Tell him not to feel too bad, his trees is pruned, his ground is plowed and his house is air conditioned." Bill Maudlin was truly a man of his time. He could make us laugh and cry at the same time. God Bless Bill Esther |
#3
|
||||
|
||||
Salute!
May He Rest in Peace.
Keith |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
4th Annual Rhode Island Aviation Hall of Fame induction dinner | SparrowHawk62 | Navy | 0 | 11-01-2006 09:28 AM |
Rider bill - to immigrant bill - NO vet homeless or Hungry | Margaret Diann | General Posts | 8 | 01-09-2004 08:20 PM |
?All American? to be Honored at College Football Hall of Fame | thedrifter | Marines | 0 | 06-10-2003 06:06 AM |
My Platoon Sergeant Died Today | DMZ-LT | Vietnam | 6 | 02-19-2003 06:56 AM |
Bill Mauldin, of WW II Fame of Willie & Joe, died today | thedrifter | General Posts | 7 | 01-23-2003 09:09 AM |
|