The Journal News du lieu suivant : White Plains, New York • Page 21

She 3oumal-yrus 1LIVING Ann Landers C2 Around Rockland C2 Comics C7 Television CI ROCKLAND COUNTY, N.Y., MONDAY, MAY 4, 1987 Drawn from experience For Milt Caniff, cartooning therapy as well as career By Bruce Fessier Gannett News Service Action-adventure cartoonist Milt Caniff has had some trials and tribulations of his own. The Palm Springs, resident and former longtime resident of New City, who launches his "Steve Canyon" comic strip out of New York, had a quadruple heart bypass in May 1986 and a hernia operation Jan. 28. And Bunny, his wife of 56 years, has been in ill health. But, Caniff, 80, is still providing more than 500 newspapers with drawings and stories of "Steve Canyon," one of the most widely read adventure strips, says King Features Syndicate.

And Caniff jokes that he'll continue drawing Canyon "as long as I can make a buck." But his lettering artist, Shel Dorf, says Caniff's cartoons are more to Caniff than just a source of income. "He used his work to come back from illness (last year)," Dorf says. "I think if he didn't have the strip, he wouldn't have made as quick a recovery. The strip was his therapy." "It is like therapy," Caniff confirms. "In my case, nothing I've done has been able to inhibit my work." Caniff has been drawing Canyon for 40 years.

Before that, "Terry and the Pirates" and, before that, in the early 1930s, an adventure strip called "Dickie Dare." "He was the youngest cartoonist to write an adventure strip," Dorf says. "And now I think he's the oldest. His longevity attests to his popularity. He's lasted because he's still at the top of his storytelling ability." Like his late friend, film director Orson Welles, Caniff combines a narrative technique with creative "camera angles." As early as the mid-1930s, Caniff was using unusual shadings and giving his panels the "push Please see CANIFF on page C8 n-K p. i 1 i J- IS i t.

i i7'r'f 'n i J'r-i fir' -is 7 if J'. New comic strip is launched by Mort Walker By Robert Viagas Staff Writer If the sizable Connecticut cartoonist contingent has a dean, it's Mort Walker of Stamford. One of the most prolific cartoonists in America, Walker created "Beetle Bailey," "Hi and Lois" and three other national comic strips "The Evermores," "Boner's Ark" and "Sam's Strip" (later retitled "Sam and and co-founded the Museum of Cartoon Art in Rye Brook. In a recent poll among readers of Gannett Westchester Rockland Newspapers, "Beetle Bailey" came in 13th among daily comics and 19th among the Sunday comics lineup. Walker, 63, launched his sixth strip, "Gamin and Patches" in 200 newspapers nationwide last week.

Question: What's the premise of "Gamin and Answer: It's about a little boy and his dog. He's a streetwise kid, based on some street kids that I've met in my travels, ones who will outsmart you and bamboozle you. Except that he (Gamin) is on the honest side. But he's still got the smarts and thought it'd be an interesting way to present comments about society and philosophy through the eyes of a kid. Can you give an example? Here's one of my early favorites.

He says to his dog, "Hey Patches, what's the only thing you subtract from when you add to it?" Patches has a big question mark, he doesn't know. Gamin says, "The truth! Let the math teachers figure that one out." Do you do all the writing for this strip? I'm doing everything, all the writing, all the drawing, just the way I started "Beetle Bailey" back in 1950. It wasn't for maybe three years until I got an assistant. I think it helped "Beetle" a great deal because I was able to imprint my own personality and solidify the characters. What was the genesis of this strip? Were you approached by someone who said, 'We're interested in a new or were you sitting at your desk one day and the characters came to you? I got the idea of doing a real mean little kid a while back.

"Dennis the Menace" doubled. It was called "Rotten Ralph." He was so rotten! He smoked and he drank and he chased little girls, was GannettMichael Biscegli Veteran cartoonist Mort Walker of Stamford, is shown with his latest comic strip. CP XT? fit the kid is usually kind of an optimist, a positive person. Considering all the recent interest in the plight of the homeless, it sounds like a very timely strip. Is that intentional? We don't ever specify that he lives on the street but we never show him at home.

A lot of this is based on my experiences during the Depression in Kansas City, Mo. I would leave the house in the morning and I'd go out and do odd jobs. I'd caddy, I sold fudge, I sold magazines, I threw newspapers anything to make a dime. I'd come back home dirty and tired at night and fall in bed and go to sleep. But I enjoyed it.

It was a good experience always in trouble. I had it arourtd for a while and nobody seemed to like it all that much. I guess it was kind of a negative aspect. Four or five years ago, one of my assistants looked at it and said, "I think you ought to work some more on it." Then my wife (Cathy Walker, executive director of the Newspaper Features Council) looked at it and said, "Why don't you make him a nice little kid? I like the ones where he's nice better." So then I thought I would give all the acerbic cynical comments to the dog (Patches). The dog is the one who makes the "bad" comments and the cynical observations, and for me.

In "Gamin and Patches," are there supporting characters, or will they come along as time passes? He has friends like Paddy the doorman and Jose the hot dog vendor, and Guglielmo the greengrocer. He (Gamin) does odd jobs for them, delivers and helps out. And he knows all the street people, too. I've got a whole cast of these colorful characters, like Screwy King Louie who dresses up like a king, and a guy we call Corrugated Joe who sits in a box looking for an honest man. What do you think of strips like "The Far I love it.

It challenges the imagination. A lot of people don't get it, you know. People get mad at it because it kind of challenges them or something. It's typical of "Doonesbury," "Bloom County" and "The Far Side" that you either love 'em or hate 'em. How do you keep "Beetle" (37 years) and "Hi and Lois" (34 years) fresh? I do about three times as much writing as I ever use.

I like to weed things out and choose the better ideas, so I always wind up with big boxes full of old gags I never use. I have three people that help me (write). LE-T TC HurM TPE TCUTVJ 5 HE PATCHES, tOMATS TME OULY WAT yOO SUBTRACT FCOM TEACHER that eve DHEW yOUAVO l9 Ami UMQ courtesy of the artist and United Features Syndicate CopyrigM 1867, North Amnncan Syndicate 'Gamin and Patches' made its debut in 200 newspapers. Steve Canyon Delegates, fearing 'tyranny delayed ratification tho rt w. 1 i Emr rrrr Marina hnrn in Tannan.

the prandson of one of the Yl was Second of two parts. Mar )ij I original patentees. He lived in what is now the Manse in Tappan, and later in Blauvelt or "Greenbush." There is no evidence that any of the four took part in the debates at Poughkeepsie. Throughout the 40-day session, they apparently sat, listened, and until the last, voted "no," with the single exception of Woodhull. They all shared a deep distrust of the tyranny of nnrpntratprl nnwer in central eovernment.

and they 1 l.i... 4 By Isabella K. Saved For The Journal-News Rockland County, as we know it today, was still a part of Orange County when the Constitution was ratified by New York in 1788 at a convention held in Poughkeepsie. The delegates from this part of New York are therefore found in the old records under the heading of Orange County (Rockland not having become a separate county until 1798). Four delegates, all devout Clintonians, were sent to the convention from Orange County.

They were: John Haring, Henry Wisner, John Wood and Jesse Woodhull. All had held public office, courtesy of Clinton's powerful Council of Appointments, and one, John Haring, was a member of that council. They became delegates by popular vote, but their election was a formality for they had no opponents. At the time, the population of Orange County numbered 18,748, of whom some 3,450 were adult white males eligible to vote. They were mostly farmers and minor officeholders.

Ten percent of them 340 actually went to the polls and voted. The results were: Jesse Woodhull, Cornwall, 340 votes; John Haring, Tappan, 332 votes; Henry Wisner, Goshen, 331 votes; John Wood, Minisink, 221 votes. Three of the four were identified with communities located then and now in Orange County, "north of the mountains," where most of the population was. But two of those three Henry Wisner and John Wood had some ties to present-day Rockland, and John i feared that the Constitution fashioned at Philadelphia only would substitute a homemade tyranny for the one 3,000 miles away. They had fought a war for individual liberty and the rights to self-government.

They did not want to see those rights eroded or lost, perhaps least of all to other Americans. John Haring, the delegate from Tappan, was a natural leader in the emerging state and nation. He held so many public offices, sometimes simultaneously, that he has been called the Father of his County. He served in New York's Provincial Congress, twice as president pro tern; in the Continental Congress; and as a state senator, a county judge and a member of the Council of Appointments, then the state's great patronage machine. A tall, handsome man, said to have resembled George Washington, he was self-educated, having spent only six weeks in school, all of them, according to one biographer, devoted to studying law.

He was a signer of the Orangetown Resolutions and was a delegate to the Second Continental Congress which Please see CONSTITUTION on page C2 JUm JiuffMil.NwtWarran lnalt Sally Dewey of the Tappantown Historical Society, left, and Isabelle K. Savell at the gravesite of John Haring in the Tappan Reformed Chjrch cemetery..