Famous Cartoonist Goes To ‘Great Drawing Board’

3-26-10

‘Dan Flagg’ Creator Don Sherwood Dies At 79

By JIM KEVLIN

Famed cartoonist Don Sherwood, who would slip caricatures of his Oneonta buddies into “Dan Flagg” and his other strips, has passed away, his former wife Dolly confirmed.
SHERWOOD/
From A-1
“Soon, I’m going to that great drawing board in the sky,” he told his longtime friend, former Oneonta mayor David Brenner, during a visit last July.
And on March 6, 2010, he did, at the Levine & Dickson Hospice House, Huntersville, N.C., where Dolly and their son, Jason, both live.  He was 79.
“He had quite a career, quite a career,” recalled “The Voice of Oneonta” Joe Campbell. The two were pals from Campbell’s radio days, where once the surprised DJ discovered his image, holding a microphone, on a Route 7 billboard Sherwood had done for Pizzaland.
In a come-up interview before his final local exhibit, last July at the B. Sharp Gallery on Franklin Mountain, Sherwood recalled how his career took off when he was just 17 and, from his boyhood home in Otego, he sent sample drawings to Chester Gould, “Dick Tracy” creator.
“Young man, if you are in Chicago,” Gould wrote back, “please come to Tribune Tower.  I think you’re going to go a long way.”
Young Don didn’t even wait to finish high school, catching the next train to Chicago.  Soon, he was drawing for Milton Caniff’s “Terry and The Pirates,” another famous strip, at the Chicago Daily News.
In 1948, he joined the Marines, fought in Korea, and that laid the groundwork for “Dan Flagg.”
In the early 1960s, when he was considering the strip, “Buzz Sawyer,” “Beetle Bailey,” “Steve Canyon” and other strips represented all the other services.
“Don, there’s no chance for another military strip,” he was told.  But he defied the advice and launched “Dan Flagg” on April 15, 1963, which was a huge success, running in virtually every daily newspaper in the country in the 1960s. 
“Dan” made Don a celebrity, and soon he was pal-ing around with movie stars like Robert Taylor and famous throughout the land.  Oneonta even celebrated a “Dan Flagg Day.”
As the Vietnam War ground on, however, young newspaper readers became disillusioned with the military, all such strips were doomed, and Sherwood found himself in the middle of the national debate.
On the one hand, newspaper editors were telling him:  Bring Dan Flagg back from Vietnam.  On the other, the Marine brass – including Gen. David Shoup, the Corps commandant – lobbied him to keep Flagg there.
The strip expired in the early ’70s, but Sherwood’s career continued in full flower.  He drew for Hanna-Barbera, including a stint filling in on “The Flintstones.”  He launched other strips, including “The Devlins” and, in 1980, “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon,” the Mountie being one of his boyhood heroes.
In the 1980s – according to material the cartoonist provided to retired funeral director Jim Hurley – Sherwood “ordered his Marine Corps major (Dan Flagg) out of retirement” to be featured in a motion picture, “A Legend’s Return.”
Dale Robertson – among other things, he was a host, as was Ronald Reagan, on “Death Valley Days” – was supposed to star in the title role.  But Robertson died, and so did the project.
In 1991, Sherwood collaborated with Dick Clark on a strip to be called “Dick Clark’s Rock and Roll,” but that also never happened.
Some of Sherwood’s work is on display at the Roy Rogers Museum in Branson, Mo. At the time of his death, he was working on a cartoon life of Don Imus for the National Broadcast Hall Fame, according to Brennan.
Joe Campbell got to know Sherwood in the early ‘70s, when the cartoonist was living at Emmons Farm with his wife, son and daughter Tracy.  Sherwood heard Campell’s radio show, “Sentimental Journey,” liked it and called to introduce himself.
Once, the cartoonist did a compilation of the fictional characters Campbell created on air:  “They looked just like I’d imagined them.”  During the Bicentennial, Campbell grew a beard, and Sherwood delighted in slipping his whiskered buddy into panels.
Brenner got to know Sherwood at about the same time.  Both members of St. James Episcopal, they played volleyball together.
Brenner showed up in a “Partridge Family” comic book, and in “Sergeant Preston.”
Sherwood, who enjoyed a nip, got a reputation for missing deadlines, and it was Dolly (Dolores) who kept her husband’s career on track.
When Sherwood visited last summer Brenner had him to dinner, and then took him to dinner at Bella Michaels.
“I want to give you one piece of my art work,” he told the former mayor.  “Not of you, but for you.”
“It was a very good rendering of Flagg,” Brenner recounted, “with the word ‘Leatherneck’ across the top.  He signed it, ‘to my good friend, Dave Brenner.’”
Because of his particular shortcoming, Sherwood could be a “daunting” friend, Brenner said, but he added:  “You write the faults of your friends on sand.  You carve their strengths on granite.  He was a good friend.”
Brenner and Campbell both knew Sherwood had cancer, and suspected last summer’s visit would be the last time they saw him.
The cartoonist and his wife had gone their separate ways, but when, failing, he moved near Jason in Huntersville, she came to visit and stayed to tend for him.
While gone, he will long be remembered by fans of cartoons and comics, and you can find Don Sherwood’s life and opus debated on blogs and sites across the Internet.
He had a sense of this.
When interviewed last summer, he had just returned from Heroes Con 2009 in Charlotte, N.C., the largest comic-book convention in the country.
“The young kids flocked to my table,” he said with satisfaction.  “They flock to my table because they call me a legend.”