St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 142

WB2 st. louis post-dispatch THE WEATHERBIRD TURNS 100 Sunday, February 11,2001 www.postnet.comweatherbird-j- A downtown street scene, circa 1900, near the intersection of Franklin Avenue (now Martin Luther King Drive) and Ninth Street. St. Louis was a very different place when the bird arrived 100 years ago This Is where the Weatherbird was born in 1901. The Post-Dispatch occupied this building at 513 Olive Street from 1888 to 1902.

The city's population was it was the fourth-largest city in the nation and the 24th-largest city in the world. The Post-Dispatch cost one cent. Horses clip-clopped along cobblestone streets, delivering wares, and streetcars crisscrossed the city, taking us to work or play. City fathers were busy planning the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904 but hadn't decided where to hold it. Smoke spewed from chimneys, as we stoked the coal fires to keep warm.

A furnished room in a boarding-house on Franklin Avenue (now Martin Luther King Drive) cost $3 a week. You couldn't get a decent glass of water the city's purification plant didn't open until 1902. Women's shoes black kid with top lace, hand turned and with an opera heel cost 98 cents. You could get a full set of false teeth for $1, while a solid silver bowl a wedding gift item at Mermod Jaccard's jewelry sold for $7.50. A can of spinach cost 17 cents, $2 for a dozen cans.

Carter's Little Liver Pills were around even then. The claim was that they were good for headaches, sallow skin and torpid livers. John M. McGuire and Mary Delach Leonard 1 t- (it) 'l 15, History Happy 100th Bird-day Continuedfrom WB1 "Tl POST-DISPATCH hr 'finer bvcrttmim UOPf TODAYS -tm. y-h-Jii rn urn- iimi Painted canary yellow, the old Post-Dispatch delivery trucks were dominated by Weatherbirds, as was this truck, examined by a passer-by in the 1950s.

gets through quicker and steps aside. All other columnists confuse me." Famous jazz and blue-grass musicians have paid musical tribute to the Weatherbird. Louis Armstrong wrote a salute, the "Weatherbird Rag," a song recorded by New Orleans jazz great King Oliver in 1923. Later, country and bluegrass singer and composer John Hartford wrote a fiddle tribute called "The Weatherbird Reel." Hartford, a native of University City, is best known for his hit "Gentle on My Mind." "I started collecting Weatherbirds when I was a kid," he said. "Weatherbird, with his cigar, is so much a part of St.

Louis, and reminds me of my grandfather, who was born in 1870." The words of the bird Bird lines were best described by a man who probably wrote more of them than anyone, the legendary Post-Dispatch reporter Carlos Hurd. He was bound for a European vacation aboard the liner Carpathia when the Titanic sank in 1912, claiming 1,503 lives. When Titanic survivors were rescued by the Carpathia, Hurd was the first reporter to interview them, and his accounts became a worldwide scoop, both in the Post-Dispatch and Joseph Pulitzer's old New York World. Hurd would later gain fame for his coverage of the bloody East St. Louis race riots in 1917.

Hurd's witty bird lines, which he scribbled down for nearly 30 years until his death in 1950, often came to him as he rode the streetcar to the newspaper office, then at Olive and 12th streets. He described his bird lines as "daily comments on politics, sports, fashion, the triumphs of science and the vicissitudes of war and diplomacy. So, much as he would like to discuss the weather most of the time, and the ballgame some of the time, the bird finds himself constrained to dwell on the more static themes afforded by the news columns. Like a humorist of the time, all he knows is what he sees in the paper." Hurd's late daughter, Frances Hurd Stadler, said her father's humor "just bubbled out of him." She said the streetcar ride from their house on Waterman to the newspaper office usually took 35 to 40 minutes. "If he didn't have a bird line by then, he was a pretty worried man," she said.

One of Hurd's most memorable bird lines was published in 1936 when Britain's King Edward VIII let the world know he planned to marry a twice-divorced American commoner, Wallis Warfield Simpson. It was a serious no-no for an English king. With the Weatherbird that day came Hurd's line, a play on the country's national anthem "Will Britannia waive the rules?" Of course, they didn't, and Edward abdicated the throne to marry Simpson. "Heavy reign fall in London," said the bird line that day. At the dawn of World War II, when Germany's ally, Italy, invaded Ethiopia, the African nation's Emperor Haile Selassie fled just ahead of the Italian invaders.

That day, above a dapper Weatherbird dressed in a sport coat and vest In fact, the principal function of this postage-stamp-size cartoon is to offer a pithy opinion on just about everything. Its brief utterances are often plays on words or outrageous puns, known in the newsroom as "bird lines." In its earliest days, the Weatherbird spoke only about weather conditions in the city. But it didn't take long before the bird began peeping about news issues. An early rule was that the bird line would not exceed eight words. Today, bird line messages are usually pithier.

The Weatherbird tackles not only local issues but also national and international news stories, sports and lifestyle trends. Given its longevity, the bird has had a lot to say from its newsprint perch. It's observed: five wars, two worldwide; 18 presidents; two presidential assassinations; 15 Cardinals World Series appearances; a St. Louis Rams Super Bowl win; man landing on the moon; plagues, pestilence and the 1904 St. i jjuuis worm rair.

For a time, the Weatherbird even became a brand name for a children's shoe. In 1907, the Peters Shoe at 13th and Washington, came out with Weatherbird School Shoes, using bird figurines as sales tools. As a major advertiser in the Post-Dispatch, Peters Shoe had the newspaper's OK to use the Weatherbird. But in 1931, the newspaper acquired a patent for the Weatherbird, and Peters Shoe then part of the old Roberts, Johnson and Rand Shoe Co. switched to a rooster.

Flying high Post-Dispatch readers love the little birdie, but no one more so than the late Charles Weisenstein of Columbia, 111. He began collecting Weatherbirds in 1908 and before he died had saved 14,000 Weatherbirds. Of course, his other passion was keeping a daily record of temperature readings. Possibly the most interesting bird aficionado was a local gangster in the 1940s Frank Russo who gave himself the nickname "the Weatherbird." And the passion for the Weatherbird lives on with a new generation of bird lovers. Michael A.

Banashek, 33, of Creve Coeur, a senior project engineer for Horner Shifrin began collecting Weatherbirds when he was 9 and estimates that he has 8,760 birds in his scrapbook. When he was away studying engineering at Rice University in Houston, Ba-nashek's parents clipped and saved the birds for him. These bird lovers come from all over, and some of the most passionate have had tattoos depicting the Weatherbird etched on their ankles and arms. In 1938, a Southern newspaper editor called the Weatherbird "the swellest columnist now practicing, because he iJ and sporting a pipe, was Hurd's bird line, "The Lion of Judah takes it on the lam." The Lion of Judah was Selassie's sobriquet. "A new ray for the son of heaven" was published in 1945 when America dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan; "son of heaven" was a term used for the Japanese emperor.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor four years earlier, the bird, standing in uniform and saluting with a flag as a backdrop, said nothing at all. He was also silent and dressed in black on April 13, 1945, the day after President Franklin D. Roosevelt died. Sprinkled among the early Weatherbirds are some racist and sexist bird lines that are shocking to see today. In that sense, the Weatherbird has reflected the changing social and cultural mores of the country.

The style and gender of the bird have also changed throughout the century. The Weatherbird has taken on the characteristics of a crow, Winston Churchill, Louis Armstrong and even did a bit of dressing up, appearing in 1910 in the gown of a Veiled Prophet queen. "How would I do for Queen of the VP," went that bird line. Staff artist Bob Bradley got permission to make the Weatherbird pregnant to accompany a story about Diana, Princess of Wales. It was when news broke that Princess Di was with child.

The next day, the bird was a guy again. But the bird has also taken on maternal characteristics on certain Mother's Days. And on one pleasant summer day the front page had no bird at all, just a drawing of a bulletin board with this line: "Nothing doing today. I have gone fishing. P.D.

Bird." For 100 years, the Weather-bird's dress and physical characteristics even its facial features have been controlled by the six Celebrate the Weatherbird's birthday at these events: "A Bird Bash at the City Museum, 701 North 15th Street at Washington Avenue. The exhibit begins today, the 100th anniversary of the Weather-bird's birthday and continues through Sunday, May 27. Six exhibit areas will celebrate the "life" of this brash, funny and outspoken little bird. There will be interactive activities for all ages. At 11:30 this morning, a five-tier birthday cake will be served to the first 300 patrons.

The exhibit is open during regular City Museum hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays, and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.

For more information, telephone 314-231-2489. The St. Louis Artists' Guild, 2 Oak Knoll Park, Clayton: The exhibit continues through Saturday, March 10, and features 80 cartoons, from editorials to the funnies, all from private collections. The Weatherbird will be among the cartoons featured; others include the work of Charles Schulz, Al Capp, Milt Caniff and Walt Disney. The Guild is open from noon to 4 p.m.

Tuesdays through Sundays. For more information, telephone 314-727-9599. Blueberry Hill Restaurant, 6504 Del-mar Boulevard, University City. Stop by and see Joe Edwards' tribute to the Weatherbird. From top to bottom, a series of Weatherbird knickknacks, including a Post-Dispatch postcard; a lapel button, issued around 1902; and a pewter bird similar to the one that sat on the desk of Joseph Pulitzer son of the newspaper's founder.

postnet.comj ViewWeatherbirds back to September 1999 online at postnet.com weatherbird 1 In the mid 1950s, Amadee Wohlschlaeger, who drew the Weatherbird for nearly 50 years, does his Michelangelo thing on the tail of one of the newspaper's corporate aircraft. artists who drew the bird. The fashions varied with the times. The bird has dressed as a ballplayer or soldier, an aviator or railroad engineer. During the '70s and '80s newspaper staffers took to calling it the "Weather-frog" because of the way its beakless face looked back then.

For some time now, the bird has had a pronounced beak. Almost like the beak it had on Feb. 11,1901. Peep, peep a hundred years later, and it's still chirping. Back in St.

Louis in 1945 to attend a dinner party for Joseph Pulitzer birthday, Weatherbird creator Harry B. Martin works at a drawing board at the newspaper office, then at 12th (now Tucker) and Olive, on another birdie, shown here. PI Does the birder get a day off? The Weatherbird was on leave during one of the most momentous periods in 20th-century history Aug. 17, 1945, through Sept. 6, 1945.

During those three weeks, the Japanese surrendered, ending World War II, and the nation celebrated V-J Day. The reason for the bird's absence? A newspaper strike had shut down the city's three dailies: the Post-Dispatch, Globe-Democrat and Star-Times. On Sept. 7, when the papers resumed publication, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Daniel Fitz-patrick drew an editorial cartoon showing the Weatherbird looking up at a front page of the Post-Dispatch with some of the missed headlines. "Where was it I left off?" asked the Weatherbird.

In his very early years, the Weatherbird occasionally took a day off, no doubt coinciding with artist Harry B. Martin's work schedule. Since then, the bird has been a daily fixture on Page One. John McGuire.