Haleiwa Surf Condos: September 2010

Back in 1988, Mort Walker author and creative artist for drawing the Beetle Bailey cartoon strip and brother to our own ML or Gramma Lu visited here. I'm currently looking for pictures to mark his trip.

Here is one photo I found with the Doroha family sitting in front of Unit 101. He had drawn pictures for each of them and signed them.

Beetle Bailey makes 60 years old today August 31, 2010
STAMFORD, Conn. — Beetle Bailey is slouching toward retirement age, but the lazy Army private won't be getting rest anytime soon from his tour of duty on newspaper comics pages. The indolent wise guy, whose popularity soared when he enlisted during the Korean War, turns 60 on Saturday.

Mort Walker, who conjured up Beetle and has been putting him on paper every day for all those decades, says he'll continue with his creation until he's no longer able.
"I don't know how I'd be retired," said Walker, 86. "I wake up every day with another idea."

The genial gags by Beetle and the cast of characters — Sarge and his dog, Otto, Gen. Amos Halftrack, Miss Buxley and others — are followed seven days a week by readers in 1,800 newspapers, which is "astronomically huge," said Brendan Burford, comics editor at King Features, the strip's syndicating service.

Charles Schulz, who created and worked on the enormously popular Peanuts strip for nearly 50 years before his death in 2000, came close to Walker's longevity. But "no one has worked on the same strip for 60 years with that kind of consistency," Burford said.

"He's definitely in a pretty seriously elite class," he said.
King Features has been celebrating Beetle's anniversary by running Sunday cartoons by Walker of Beetle re-enacting military events in history, such as celebrating the end of World War II or crossing the Delaware with George Washington. The commemorative strips put Beetle in different venues, but Walker said he has otherwise kept Beetle as is over the decades.

"He's still pretty much lazy," he said. "I haven't changed him a tremendous amount because I think that's his character that I want to keep. He represents the little man in all of us." "Beetle is the embodiment of everybody's resistance to authority, all the rules and regulations which you've got to follow," Walker said. "He deals with it in his own way. And in a way, it's sort of what I did when I was in the Army. I just often times did what I wanted to do." Beetle Bailey, originally called Spider, made his comic-strip debut as a smart aleck college student on Sept. 4, 1950, in 12 newspapers, according to King Features. It considered dropping the strip at the end of Walker's one-year contract, but when Beetle stumbled into an Army recruiting post in 1951 during the Korean War, the number of newspapers that picked up Beetle climbed.

Andrew Farago, curator of the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, which is marking Beetle's anniversary with an exhibit, said Beetle, his pals and their uncomplicated gags have become familiar friends to readers over the years. "I think people find that really comforting," he said. Not everyone. Some women have been angry about the caricature of a dumb blond secretary, the curvaceous Miss Buxley, Walker said.
"The women's right groups got so riled up against me they had a national agenda of attacking me," Walker said. Burford said as an editor he wants artists "to work creatively and make people laugh and smile," but had to restrain Walker at times.
"Sometimes you have to pull back on this leash," he said. "As the rights of women increased, he became more sensitive to it." Still, as the newspaper industry retrenches, editors have not axed Beetle, Burford said. "Newspapers don't want to cut features that readers love," he said. Joe Schiesl, 72, a retired National Weather Service meteorologist in Manassas, Va., said he has been reading Beetle Bailey since he was in the ROTC and Air Force in the 1950s. "The characters, you have those in any organization," he said. "You have deadbeats like Beetle, and then you have people on their case like the sergeant." "I like it because it's funny. It perks you up every day," Schiesl said. Walker, born in El Dorado, Kan., earned $1 for his first cartoon at age 11 during the Depression. It was a big raise from the 10 cents an hour he was paid delivering to a local drug store, leading him to see cartooning as "where the real money is."

He now works out of his spacious Connecticut home in a study stuffed with golf trophies, cartoon awards, figurines of Beetle and his Army pals, numerous photos of celebrities on the wall, Beetle refrigerator magnets and a clock with Beetle and other characters from the strip. Walker, his two sons and Jerry Dumas, a colleague of 55 years, meet for an hour once a month to brainstorm gags for the comic strip. "Then we go to lunch and play golf," he said. Each of the four men proposes 30 gags, which are winnowed down until there are just enough strips to be used in a month. Walker rewrites them to try to improve the gags, he said. Dumas, a veteran cartoonist who draws the strip Sam and Silo and drew for The New Yorker, said the "gag conference" has always been enjoyable. "You sit down with a sheet of paper and pen. You just doodle," he said. "You come up with a picture you haven't come up with before. That's the hard part." Producing a cartoon every day for 60 years isn't easy, but Walker knows how to entertain Beetle's millions of fans. "I found that what they want is a laugh every day," he said. "They want funny pictures."

Beetle was originally a college student named Spider at Rockview University. The characters in that early strip were modeled after Walker's fraternity brothers at the University of Missouri. During the strip's first year, Beetle quit school and enlisted in the U.S. Army on 13 March 1951, where he has remained ever since.

Most of the humor in Beetle Bailey revolves around the inept characters stationed at Camp Swampy, (inspired by Camp Crowder, where Walker had once been stationed while in the Army). Private Bailey is a lazy sort who usually naps and avoids work, and thus is often the subject of verbal and physical chastising from his supervisor, Sergeant Snorkel. The characters never seem to see combat themselves, with the exception of mock battles and combat drills. In fact, they seem to be in their own version of stereotypical comic strip purgatory (initially basic training, they now appear to be stuck in time in a regular infantry division). The uniforms of Beetle Bailey are still the uniforms of the 1950s to early 1970s Army, with green fatigues and baseball caps as the basic uniform, and the open jeep as the basic military vehicle. Sergeant First Class Snorkel wears a green Class A Army dress uniform with heavily wrinkled garrison cap; the officers wear M1 helmet liners painted with their insignia. While Beetle Bailey's unit is Company A, one running gag is that the characters are variously seen in different branches of the Army, such as artillery, armor, infantry, and paratroops.

Beetle is always seen with a hat or helmet covering his forehead and eyes. Even on leave, his "civvies" include a pork pie hat worn in the same style. He can only be seen without it once—in the original strip when he was still a college student. The strip was pulled, and never ran in any newspaper. It has only been printed in various books on the strip's history. One daily strip had Sarge scare Beetle's hat off, but Beetle was wearing sunglasses.

One running gag has Sergeant Snorkel hanging helplessly to a small tree branch after having fallen off a cliff. While he is never shown falling off, or even walking close to the edge of a cliff, he always seems to hold on to that same branch, yelling for help.

Cast of characters
Beetle Bailey is unusual in having one of the largest and most varied permanent casts of any comic strip. While many of the older characters are rarely seen, almost none have been completely retired.

[edit] Main characters
Private Beetle Bailey — the main character and strip's namesake; a feckless, shirking, perpetual goof-off and straggler known for his chronic laziness and generally insubordinate attitude. Slack, hapless, lanky and freckled, Beetle's eyes are always concealed, whether by headgear or, in the rare instance of not wearing any,[when?] by his hair.
Sergeant 1st Class Orville P. Snorkel — Beetle's nemesis; introduced in 1951. Sarge is known to frequently beat up Beetle for any excuse he can think of—leaving Beetle a shapeless pulp, (one of the most iconic images in the strip.) Sarge is too lovable to be a villain, however. Obese, snaggle-toothed and volatile, Sarge can be alternately short-tempered and sentimental. He and Beetle seem to have a mutual love/hate relationship; much of the time there's an implied truce between them. They share an uneasy alliance that sometimes borders on genuine (albeit unequal) friendship. In a recent strip,[when?] it's revealed that he is related to Beetle. He's from Pork Corners, KS.
Private "Killer" Diller — the notorious ladies' man, and Beetle's frequent crony—introduced in 1951.
Otto — Sgt. Snorkel's anthropomorphic, look-alike bulldog whom Sarge dresses up the same as himself, in an army uniform. Otto is fiercely protective of Sarge, and seems to have a particular antipathy towards Beetle. Originally he was a regular dog who walked on all fours, but Mort Walker finally decided to make him more human-like. As Walker put it, "I guess he's funnier that way." As the Sarge is often found hanging on a branch protruding from a cliff face, so once was Otto.
Cookie — the mess sergeant, who smokes cigarettes while preparing the mess hall's questionable menu. Except for the presence of cauliflower ears, a prominent heart tattoo, hairy shoulders and perpetual beard stubble, bears a striking resemblance to SFC Snorkel—and has also been known to occasionally beat up on Beetle. Like Sarge, he also loves food.
Brigadier General Amos T. Halftrack — the inept, frustrated, semi-alcoholic commander of Camp Swampy; introduced in 1951. Loves to golf, much to his wife Martha's dismay. Occasionally engages in crypto-harassment of his secretary, Miss Buxley. He's 78 years old, from Kenner, Louisiana.
Miss (Sheila) Buxley — Halftrack's beautiful, blonde, buxom civilian secretary—and occasional soldier's date (as well as a constant distraction for Halftrack). She used to live in Amarillo, Texas.[3] She appears in every Wednesday strip, with the exception of November 4, 2009; why on Wednesdays is unknown. (However, a possible prototype for Miss Buxley, a very similar-looking "new stenographer" for General Halftrack, appeared on January 22, 1970—a Thursday.) Miss Buxley has an apparent interest in Beetle, and is constantly pursued by Killer.
Private Blips — Halftrack's competent, jaded, not-at-all-buxom secretary ("blips" are small points of light on a radar screen). Resents Halftrack's constant ogling of Miss Buxley.
Lieutenant Sonny Fuzz — very young (with noticeably pointy eyebrows and very little facial hair), overly earnest, anal-retentive and "by the book", and highly susceptible to squeaky furniture. The apple-polishing Fuzz is always trying to impress uninterested superiors (especially Halftrack), and "rub it in the noses" of his subordinates. He was introduced in 1956. Mort Walker said he modeled the character and personality of Lt. Fuzz on himself, having taken himself too seriously after completing Officer Training.[4]
Lieutenant Jackson Flap — the strip's first black character, often touchy and suspicious—but effortlessly cool, introduced in 1970. Originally wore an afro hairstyle.
Private Zero — the buck-toothed, naïve farm boy who takes commands literally, and misunderstands practically everything.
Private Plato — the Camp's resident intellectual (as Tom Lehrer might say, "brings a book to every meal"); bespectacled, given to scrawling long-winded, analytical, often philosophical graffiti. Named after Plato but reportedly based on Walker's pal, fellow cartoonist Dik Browne. Plato is the only character other than Beetle to evolve from the early "college" years of the strip.[4]
Chaplain Staneglass — "He's praying... he's looking at the food... he's praying again!" According to Mort Walker's Private Scrapbook, Walker based the chaplain on Irish actor Barry Fitzgerald's priest character, from Going My Way (1944).

Supporting characters
Martha Halftrack — the General's formidable, domineering wife. She's 70 yrs. old and is from Morganfield, KY. (She has been known to sneak dates without Amos knowing.)
Bunny (originally "Buzz") Piper — Beetle's seldom-seen girlfriend.
Private Rocky — Camp Swampy's long-haired, disgruntled social dissident; a former biker gang member and rebel-without-a-clue, introduced 1958.
Private Cosmo — Camp Swampy's sunglass-wearing, resident "shady entrepreneur" and huckster. Loosely based on William Holden's Sefton character from Stalag 17; almost forgotten in the 1980s.
Captain Sam Scabbard — hard-nosed, flat-top wearing officer, often as hard on Sarge as Sarge is on Beetle.
Major Greenbrass — straight man and golf partner to Gen. Halftrack.
Private Julius Plewer — fastidious fussbudget, who eventually became Halftrack's chauffeur.
Corporal Yo — the strip's first Asian character, introduced in 1990.
Dr. Bonkus — Camp Swampy's loopy staff psychiatrist, whose own sanity is questionable.
Specialist Chip Gizmo — Camp Swampy's resident computer geek, was named by a write-in contest in 2002. The contest sponsored by Dell Computer Corp., received more than 84,000 entries. It raised more than $100,000 for the Fisher House Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides housing for families of patients at military and veterans hospitals.[5]

Here is a statue that my nephew made for our Uncle Mort. It's made of pure brass. Can you imagine the talent it takes to make a statue like this? Great work Jeremy.