February 15, 1978… a day which will
live in infamy… okay, well… maybe not. Anyhow for your reading enjoyment, this
is what the day that the first Klyde Morris cartoon appeared in public was like
for me; the newborn cartoonist plus some immediate results and non-results.
Keep in mind that I was a second
trimester freshman at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University where “The Avion”
was the very popular student newspaper. Wednesday was always “Avion Day” and
stacks of the newspapers were dumped at strategic locations all over campus at
about lunch time. For the rest of the afternoon when you showed up for class
EVERYONE had an Avion open and was reading it at their desk. It was not at all
uncommon for the class instructor to be sitting there with an open Avion before
class started. So, when you put an item into the Avion, everyone from the
lowest freshman to the university president was going to see it. That was the
environment into which I submitted my first cartoon strip.
The Avion staff had snuck that first
cartoon strip into the paper because the idiot editor, the late Ray Katz, had
ideas to make the cartoon what he wanted rather than what I created. It went to
the printer on Monday night and after I waited all day Tuesday, it finally
appeared on Wednesday the 15th.
Getting off the bus from our
off-campus dorm (a motel out by the interstate called the Royal Scottish Inn,
and in Riddle speak “The RSI”) I snapped up an Avion and headed off to my Nav.
II class at the flight line complex. I took a moment to make sure the cartoon
looked okay. After all, I’d hand drawn all of the frames and done the whole
cartoon with a black Bic pen, so who knew what it would print up as. To my
surprise it looked just fine. Now, however, came the real acid test- what would
be the reaction… if any.
Strolling into the classroom I got my
first taste of the best part of being a cartoonist… no one knows who you are!
Since my last name is so hard for teachers to pronounce, on the first day of
every class the instructors took one look at it and asked if they could just
call me by my first name when they called roll. Of course my registered first
name isn’t “Wes” so when the call went out for “Walter” I just said “here” and
that was it. Thus, Wes Oleszewski never answered the roll in any of my early
college classrooms. Now, I could sit in class with anonymity and watch the
others as they opened their Avions with my cartoon strip at the bottom of page
2. There were no other cartoons residing in the Avion at that time.
As the guy in front of me opened to
page 2 he looked right at the cartoon… and then went to the sports section
without as much as a snicker. Nuts! Next over beside me another guy sat down,
opened his Avion and then went directly to the fraternities page. Crap! The guy
two rows up opened to page two, then folded his paper over to read page 3.
Shit! Everyone that I watched seemed to just skim right past my cartoon. There
wasn’t a single snicker or “Hey look at this,” or anything… no reaction
what-so-ever. In my chemistry class that afternoon, it was the same exact
nothing! I got back on the bus to the RSI and no one there seemed to notice my
cartoon either. I dragged myself dejectedly to Room 182 and flopped into my
bunk. I was sure that my cartoon had bombed. When my roommate got back he said
that he hadn’t even looked at it. Gee, that helped. My other roommate just
shrugged and said, “Yeah, I saw it.”
Ugh.
Late that afternoon we got a rain
shower that moved through which added to my gloom as I boarded the bus back to
campus to have dinner. As the bus stopped at the doors to the University
Center, the bus doors opened and I saw a rain-soaked Avion resting in the
gutter opened to my cartoon. The guy who got off the bus ahead of me stepped on
the cartoon.
Cutting one’s wrists with a butter
knife from the cafeteria was an option, but with my luck the paramedics would get
there in time to save me. I considered that the food alone may just do me in.
Then it dawned on me that in the strip I’d lampooned not only William Stafford,
the director of admissions, but worst of all Jack Hunt the University
President. Stafford probably couldn’t do me a lot of harm, but President Hunt
could boot my smart ass right out of the school with little more than an afterthought.
Now I’d put my college life and my whole future at risk over a bombed cartoon!
I figured I was deader meat than the over-cooked cheese burger sitting in front
of me.
The following day I went to the Avion
office for their weekly meeting. I just knew that Katz was going to carve me up
in front of everyone… but he wasn’t there. In fact no one was there but Keith
Kollarik the assistant editor. He told me that there would be no paper this
week because Monday was President’s Day. I mentioned that the first strip was a
dud and he just turned and said, “It was fine, we’ll need another one for the
next issue.”
Now I was puzzled.
What I would not actually realize
until the following autumn was that I’d been judging the reaction through a keyhole.
Where I was not looking, the reaction was that the strip was a major hit. So, I
spent the rest of that spring 1978 trimester with my head down writing
cartoons, turning them in and then running for cover. Meanwhile, the other
students, the faculty, the staff, the administrators and most importantly
President Hunt, loved the strips from the beginning.
I should have been tipped off when I
got a message in my mailbox saying that Dr. Jeff Ledewitz, the VP of Student
Affairs, wanted to see me in his office. I ignored that. Soon a memo came up to
the Avion office telling me that Dr. Ledewitz wanted to see me. I vanished into
the student body as best I could. Finally, Dr. Ledewitz’s secretary May, came
walking into the Avion office and she had my photo in her hand! Looking around
she spotted me. “You!” she pointed, “Come with me, Dr. Ledewitz wants to see
you.” That was it… I was getting my butt kicked out of school. But all he
wanted to do was tell me how much he loved the cartoons- especially the ones
about him. Ooooook. (Many years later he told me that when we met I was not at
all what he expected me to be. Instead of a wild and crazy cartoonist, I was
this meek quiet guy. I told him that was because I was expecting him to kick my
ass out of school.) As I left his office after that first meeting he had one
final word of advice, “Oh, by the way, President Hunt’s looking for you.” A
wave of doom swept over me.
About a week later I was coming down
the staircase in the UC making my way from the Avion to the cafeteria when I
looked up and saw President Hunt coming through the doors at the north end of
the building! AKK! I knew that President Hunt knew every single student either
by name, face, reputation or all of the above- so he’d know me in a heartbeat!
When I got to the bottom of the stairs I ducked around the corner and pinned
myself against the wall. I stood there hardly breathing until I was sure he’d
passed, then I bee-boped out and headed to the cafeteria to fetch my morning
tea. As I passed one of the pillars just outside the entrance, an arm reached
out and nabbed me by the elbow! “GOTCHA!” Hunt barked. I probably could have
paid off my tuition with the solid gold brick that I shit at that moment. But,
just like Dr. Ledewitz, all President Hunt wanted to do was tell me how much he
enjoyed my cartoons. He then offered me, “an open door” to his office to drop
in and talk about anything. Yes, I often took him up on that. (A quarter of a
century later, Dean Rockett told me that I was only one of two students that
Hunt ever extended that privilege to. Hell, I thought he did it for every
student.) Many times we disagreed on subjects, but when it came to “our”
university we saw eye to eye. In one such visit in the early 1980s he said that
I didn’t realize just how much power I had on campus. I scoffed big time- “ME…
power… HA! I’m just a workin’ class Polack kid from the wrong side of Saginaw,
Michigan who draws funny pictures that happen to show up in the school paper… I
don’t even know what power means,” I told him. He’d always lean back in his
chair when he went into teaching mode- and as he did that he said, “If you drew
a cartoon that told everyone to break the windows out of the University Center,
the next morning I’d get calls from campus security telling me there were
windows broken.” I was shocked, “Good Lord,” I half gasped, “I’d NEVER do
ANYTHING like that!” President Hunt smiled and said, “Exactly. That’s why you’re
the right guy to be doing what you’re doing right now.” He went on to explain
that our university was going through growing pains and would continue to do so
for many years to come. As long I was lampooning him and the other characters
and events on campus, the students would read it and say, “Yeah! That hits them
where it counts,” rather than taking their frustration out on the property, the
staff and the campus security. President Hunt gave me a wider view of our
university and my cartoon strip, as well as my own, place in it.
From that point on, I saw Klyde
Morris as something much more important than just a cartoon- plus I was more
careful about where I aimed it.