I always felt a little hometown pride – and probably a little jealousy – to have a nationally syndicated cartoonist living in my hometown of Beavercreek, Ohio – just over in Tara Estates next to our very own neighborhood. His daughter Tracy attended our school, so it was a bit hard to process the fact that Mike Peters was a national celebrity. He didn’t start out that way though. Originally, he was a local political cartoonist for the Dayton Daily News (which incidentally I delivered to homes in Peters’ hometown) in 1969.
His fame began to grow across the nation as more newspapers picked up on his cartoons and he went on to become a 1981 Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist. Over the years he has been published in such respectable magazines as Newsweek, Time, U.S. News and World Report, and naturally Playboy. His fame was solidified with his daily comic strip creation Mother Goose and Grimm in 1984, still syndicated in over 800 newspapers worldwide.
By the time I actually met him, he had left Ohio for the sunnier pastures of Florida. But on Wednesday, October 15, 1997, he returned to the area to do a talk and book signing at Books & Co. in Kettering. My friend Eric Flinn and I went together to see him. I picked up the most appropriate book I could find for him to sign, On the Edge – 25 Years of Cartooning at the Dayton Daily News.
I also brought along a blank piece of white cardboard and asked him for a ‘rudimentary’ sketch of Grimm, and he happily obliged. Also I was in the midst of my ill-fated project of requesting signed sketches of Laurel and Hardy by famous cartoonists, of which I acquired a grand total of zero – following the original successful request from Walter Lantz.
Sure that the very friendly Mike Peters would be happy to help out a fellow local boy, I explained how Lantz had done this for me and asked him if he might be able to do the same if I mailed him such a request. Of course I know he would be unable to take the time to do it then and there (his talent did know some limits), but I was kind of surprised that he couldn’t oblige through the mail, stating “I really wouldn’t have time to do that.” Oh well, you know how those famous people forget the little people when they make it big and leave the nest!
Autographs of 1997 will continue…
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