From: John Klassa (klassa@cisco.com)
Date: Thu Jun 08 2000 - 06:56:04 PDT
[ Bummer... Shoe was one of those strips that never struck me as
out-and-out funny, but one which I never failed to read anyway. I'll
miss it. ]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000608/us/obit_macnelly_1.html
Thursday June 8 9:04 AM ET
'Shoe' Cartoonist Jeff MacNelly Dies
CHICAGO (AP) - Chicago Tribune cartoonist Jeff MacNelly, three-time
Pulitzer Prize winner and creator of the daily comic strip ``Shoe,''
died early Thursday. He was 53.
He died at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore after battling lymphoma
since late last year.
``Jeff was simply the most brilliant political cartoonist of the time,''
Tribune editor Howard A. Tyner said. ``No one had an eye and a sense of
humor like his. And he was as funny personally as he was in print.''
MacNelly, who lived in Rappahannock County, Va., won the Pulitzer Prize
for his editorial cartoons in 1972, 1978 and 1985. He won the first one
when he was only 24 years old after working at the Richmond News Leader
in Virginia for only 16 months.
After 12 years at the Richmond News Leader, he joined the Tribune in
1982.
But editorial cartoons weren't his only outlet. In 1977, MacNelly
began the daily comic strip ``Shoe,'' about a cranky newspaper's
editor and its two-bit hacks, all of whom just happen to be birds. The
cigar-chomping boss of the Treetops Tattler was P. Martin Shoemaker,
inspired by MacNelly's former boss Jim Shumaker, now a University of
North Carolina professor.
He also illustrated humorist Dave Barry's syndicated column.
The New York native took his first cartooning job in 1969 when he
dropped out of the University of North Carolina to take a $120-per-week
position with a weekly paper in Chapel Hill, N.C.
MacNelly announced in January that he would cut down his output during
the treatment of his illness, but he continued to produce ``Shoe'' and
other cartoons until his death.
He is survived by his wife, Susan, and two sons, Danny, 13, and Matt,
25. Another son, Jeffrey Jr., died in 1996 of injuries received in a
rock-climbing accident in Colorado. He was 24.
-- John Klassa / Cisco Systems, Inc. / RTP, NC / USA / klassa@cisco.com / <><
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