Column Brings More Visitors To Bill Mauldin

By: Dave Astor Legendary editorial cartoonist Bill Mauldin is getting more visits from fellow World War II veterans thanks to the efforts of an Orange County (Calif.) Register columnist.

Metro columnist Gordon Dillow heard that the 80-year-old Mauldin was at an Orange County nursing home and in poor physical and mental health. He also heard that one of the few things that seemed to help Mauldin feel a little better was when the cartoonist was visited by World War II veterans. Mauldin's famous World War II cartoons featuring ordinary soldiers Willie and Joe won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1945, at the age of 23. He went on to have a distinguished career as a syndicated cartoonist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Chicago Sun-Times before retiring about 10 years ago.

After receiving permission from Mauldin's family, Dillow wrote a July 30 column asking World War II veterans if they would visit or send cards to the ailing cartoonist. He received hundreds and hundreds of responses. "They're still coming in," Dillow told E&P Online. "It's amazing how big this guy was to that generation."

Dillow wrote of Mauldin: "World War II was the most important time of his life, and it's as if hearing stories of those days in Sicily and Italy and France, even from a stranger, somehow reconnects him to the world. He may or may not be able to talk back, but for those moments his eyes come alive again."