By: Dave Astor George Breisacher, the beloved ex-president of the National Cartoonists Society (NCS), died yesterday of a heart attack at his Charlotte, N.C., home.
The 1939-born Breisacher was a staff illustrator for The Charlotte Observer from 1973 until his retirement in 2001 -- after which he continued to freelance for the Observer and magazines. He was also a comic cartoonist at times during his career; for instance, he created ""Knobs"" for United Media and also worked on ""Mutt and Jeff"" just before that classic strip ended.
Breisacher joked in a 1996 NCS directory that he ""rose from total obscurity to relative obscurity in just 30 years of newspaper work."" But he was very well known among cartoonists, who elected him to a two-year term as NCS president in 1997. The Ohio-born and Michigan-raised Breisacher had previously edited the NCS newsletter from 1989 to 1997, and was also involved in the creation of the organization's Web site (
http://www.reuben.org).
""George was so wise, so easy to be around. He was a gentle man,"" Breisacher's longtime friend, ""Dennis the Menace"" cartoonist Marcus Hamilton, told the Observer.
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