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February 6, 2003
With a little help from his friends
by Chip BeckBill Mauldin's death hit me about the same way Willie and Joe would have reacted if told one of their dogface comrades had been killed in combat -- you realize it was inevitable, but that "don't make it less sad."
As a cartoonist and combat veteran myself, I was a fan of Mauldin's WWII cartoons since I first came across "Up Front" in the 1950s. I experienced more than a dozen conflicts over 33 years, and as far as I'm concerned, Mauldin still had the last word on all of them.
In 1999, when the NCS met in San Antonio, I had the honor of introducing Bill to a seminar attended by 350 colleagues and their families. It was packed! In the audience were many of Mauldin's lifelong colleagues and friends, including WWII veterans Sparky Schulz, Mort Walker, and Fred Lasswell.
At the time, Bill was not in the best of health. He had dropped a car engine on his drawing hand and, as we now know, was suffering the effects of Alzheimer's. He had been out of sight for years, so George Breisacher and I used our convention's proximity to Santa Fe to coax Bill over the State Line.
That was Mauldin?s last "round-up" with his fellow cartoonists. Advancing years had taken their toll, but the old wit and spirit was not dead by a long shot.
What I remember best is the Q&A session, which was basically a format for Mauldin to tell "war stories." Old friends and those who had never met the legend tossed questions up on the stage for Bill to expound upon.
Mauldin responded initially with a guffaw, then would launch into a story he probably told a thousand times. Invariably, he got lost in the telling of the tale because of the affliction most of us didn't know he had -- or we chalked it off to old age. It could have been embarrassing, but instead, it turned into an unexpected tribute of another kind.
Rather than let Mauldin dangle at the end of his own conversation, it was heartwarming to see another old veteran, namely pal Sparky Schulz, stand up and recall how he had heard that story before, chuckle a bit, and then go on to finish it.
Time after time, other old friends finished Mauldin's stories and thoughts, or offered up tales of their own. Mauldin was so tickled that they remembered the stories that he laughed as hard as anyone else and swore his pals should be up on the dais instead of him.
Today, Mauldin is gone. So is Sparky and Jeff MacNelly, two of the colleagues who listened that day in the shadow of the Alamo. Just like Crockett, Bowie, and Travis, these were giants of their time and calling.