U.S. Postal Service Honors Classic Cartoonist With Commemorative Stamp

By: Shawn Moynihan Somewhere, Willie and Joe are smiling: Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Bill Mauldin has received one of the nation’s highest honors by being featured on a U.S. postage stamp. The 44-cent stamp, dedicated at the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe, N.M., on Mar. 31, depicts Mauldin and his creations Willie and Joe, two characters that appeared in his cartoons in Stars and Stripes during World War II and helped to personalize America’s soldiers. Mauldin won his first Pulitzer in 1945 “for distinguished service as a cartoonist” and the Allied high command awarded him its Legion of Merit. In 1958 he became a cartoonist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where the following year he won a second Pulitzer for his cartoon portraying Doctor Zhivago author Boris Pasternak as a Soviet prisoner. — Shawn Moynihan