Commentary: Perspectives in Words and Pictures

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – I can’t recall a time in my life when I wasn’t drawing.

Some of my earliest memories involve doodling on just about anything – tabletops, walls, once in a while on paper.  As a 4-year old, I wandered into a neighbor’s plot on our street where he was building a new house and proceeded to decorate some of his fresh stone with rudimentary drawings of Batman. He wasn’t very happy. Nor were my parents.

It never really stopped. Notebook sketches from grade school through my years at Youngstown State University crowded out any trace of an education. One college notebook dedicated to Introduction to Geology, for example, had one simple notation: “physical structure.” The rest of the pages were filled with cartoons of Ronald Reagan, musicians and Doonesbury characters. I dropped the class.

Not long after, a friend of mine asked me to submit a few editorial cartoons to a student newspaper at John Carroll University. It was my first attempt at the form, and I recall it went over well. I probably knew then that journalism would factor somehow in my future.  Cartooning was especially inviting since I could combine my interest in politics and history (these subjects caught my attention – those notebooks were filled with pertinent class information) with art.

It was at this juncture that a family friend, the late attorney Richard P. McLaughlin, introduced me to Andrea Wood, who three years earlier had launched The Youngstown Business Journal.

McLaughlin, our next-door neighbor when I was growing up on Youngstown’s North Side and the Youngstown Publishing Co. corporate counsel, recalled my fondness for drawing and heard from my parents about my recent submissions to a student newspaper. The Business Journal happened to be looking for a cartoonist.

Andrea asked me to submit some work the following week. Fortunately, there was perhaps no more fertile ground for a political cartoonist than the Mahoning Valley.  The first subject, not surprisingly, was the late U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr.  As I recall, the cartoon – published in the March 1987 edition – involved some type of altercation between the bombastic congressman and a member of Struthers City Council.  Shortly after its publication, an anonymous passerby threw an egg at the newspaper’s building on Market Street – our offices were on the second story across from a karate studio. Andrea excitedly attributed the egg incident as an unhappy reaction to our ridiculing the congressman.

I was in.

Through it all, the Mahoning Valley has offered up a wide breadth of political characters that defy description.  There was the former Mahoning County Democratic Party chairman, the late Don Hanni Jr., whose antics surpassed even those of Traficant. A host of political figures – including the congressman – convicted of public corruption during the 1990s, outlandish business ventures that never materialized, and a long list of rogues. Many of them were good sports about my cartoons or didn’t care. Others took it very personally (one threat convinced me to dash off a quick note to an attorney for the record, just in case). If I had a difficult time coming up with a subject, surely Traficant, Hanni, former Youngstown Mayor George McKelvey, or past Democratic Party Chairman David Betras would, within a day or so, do or say something.

Early cartoons of U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, Traficant’s successor, portrayed him as a freckle-faced youngster with a beanie and propeller on his head, signaling a political neophyte with no future. That image soon faded as the congressman found his way around Washington with a style far different than his predecessor.  Other cartoons were deemed so insensitive or off the mark that they would never see publication.

During the mid-1990s I relocated from Youngstown to the Washington D.C. – Baltimore metro region. Still, I was able to keep tabs on the Mahoning Valley even in the pre-internet age. While in D.C., for example, I would block off some time in the Library of Congress, find a Vindicator in the basement newspaper archives, and spend the next several hours drawing my cartoon there.  I’d then send it FedEx to The Business Journal just in time to meet deadline.

It wasn’t until I returned to the Mahoning Valley in 1998 that I found myself wearing another hat at the Journal – that of a reporter. Andrea had asked me to cover the visit to YSU of Jules Feiffer, one of the most well-known satirists and cartoonists of the 20th century.  The piece appeared in the Mid-April 1998 edition, and I was hired full-time as a reporter two months later. There was a lot to learn.

Balancing the disciplines of cartoonist and reporter can be difficult. Often, I’m covering the subjects that I also draw. In many cases, I get to know them and like them, understanding full well that an objective story on a subject one week could translate into a not-so-flattering cartoon the following week.

As a reporter over the past 26 years, I’ve had the opportunity to cover the major political figures that have parachuted into town, namely presidents, presidential aspirants, or their acolytes. For the most part, these figures met my expectations: boring. More interesting were interviews with Pulitzer Prize-winning authors, musicians, inventive business leaders and members of the community who strive to make a difference.

Among the more notable – and difficult – stories to cover was the closing of the General Motors Lordstown plant, the LTV bankruptcy, the Chill Can debacle – there are dozens of others.

A poignant moment was Sept. 11, 2001. After watching the second hijacked aircraft slam into the World Trade Center, myself and copy editor Dennis LaRue jumped into a car and headed to the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport. Flights from all over the country were diverted there. Many of the passengers flew over the burning buildings shortly before their collapse, some too shocked to elaborate, others able to recount the horror.

From the vantage point of The Business Journal, it’s been a heck of a ride having the opportunity to help chronicle 37 years of the Mahoning Valley’s history in words and pictures – a perspective few have enjoyed but one I’ve come to relish.

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.