Cartooning as a Life-Saving Activity

Posted Friday, May 23, 2008 12:00 am

By: E&P Staff Did doodling save a future editorial cartoonist's life?

Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal cartoonist Chip Bok -- speaking Thursday at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio -- recalled that he was about 10 when his mother sat him down one day at her dressing table to do homework.

Soon, Bok put his mother's fingernail polish on the lamp and began doodling. An explosion ensued, but Bok's face was protected from the glass because his head was down as he drew.

"I tell everybody cartooning saved my life," said Bok, as quoted in a Friday story by Jill Gosche of The Advertiser-Tribune in Tiffin, Ohio.

Bok, whose work is distributed by Creators Syndicate, spoke as part of a Hayes-center series called "Illustrating the Guilded Age: Political Cartoons and the Press in American Politics and Culture, 1877-1901."

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Cartooning as a Life-Saving Activity

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