One of them that I remember from when I was a kid was Cappy Dick.
(Cappy Dick didn’t run in the Lorain Journal. It was in the comics section of the Sunday Plain Dealer, which my parents used to buy before the Journal launched its own Sunday edition in the late 1960s.)
So what was Cappy Dick? It was a feature designed specifically for kids that contained an assortment of small cartoons with puzzles, useful tidbits of information, simple tricks and suggestions for activities using things found around the house to have fun. The strip's mascot was the kindly, pipe-smoking sea captain after whom the feature was named.
There was also a weekly coloring contest with prizes awarded to local winners in each city, as well as one at the national level who received a pretty nice grand prize.
Here are a few samples of the feature.
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| March 16, 1965 |
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| June 10, 1973 |
Here’s an article that ran in the Arizona Daily Star on December 1, 1979 that profiles some of the local winners. It reveals the secret of their success!
The article also tells a little bit about the man behind Cappy Dick: cartoonist George Cleveland. “He started it during World War II, when he thought kids needed something special to do,” it notes. “The character Cappy Dick looks like Cleveland’s father. He made the character a ship captain for fun."
Here’s a more detailed look at the man from an article published in the Chicago Tribune at the time of his passing. As it notes, “He did not have children of his own, but with his mental-exercise comics, he found a way to be someone special to hundreds of thousands of preteens.
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| From the Chicago Tribune of May 2, 1985 |
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For more on Cappy Dick, visit this link, which will take you to a blog written by a gentleman named Matt Tauber. Matt wrote a nice piece about his memories of the strip, and reveals an interesting connection between the Cappy Dick strip and a current one called Slylock Fox (which I read and find pretty amusing).
11 comments:
I bet making that darned fluted column was a lot easier with paper straws. I'm not getting anywhere with the plastic ones...
I have to admit that I ignored the ol' Captain for my entire youth. Now that I look at it, his material seems to range from useful (temporary liquid measure) to useless (keeping an expense account for your dog. Really?)
All in all, it's fun, and I should have paid him more mind way back when.
Won one of his coloring contests in about 1968. Prize: three rubber book straps — basically just large yellow rubber bands worth about 10 cents each, but by golly I won!
Kevin
Baton Rouge, LA
When I was 11 years old I won the grand prize from "Cappy Dick".....It was a complete set of World Book Encyclopedias, a set of Childcraft Books and an oak book case. I entered through the Mansfield News Journal, Mansfield, OH. Prior to the grand prize, I had won several of the smaller prizes. That was awesome to me, as my family was not financially able to afford those
books.
Enjoyed your note. I too was a national prize winner, and also got the World Book encyclopedia and Childcraft books, along with the bookcase. This would have been in the early-mid 1960s. I had decorated an entry in which I had to count the number of bees leaving the bee hive. I got my picture published in the local newspaper (the Santa Ana Register). A great thrill for a 10-year-old child, and the encyclopedia really helped to push me academically (I'm now a physician). I still remember that summer very fondly.
Frank
I was a ‘Cappy Dick’ National Prize winner in about 1966 or so. I entered thru the Star-Ledger Newspaper, Newark, New Jersey. It was a coloring contest. The prize was a complete set of, ‘Compton’s Picture Encyclopedia’; I was about 14 years old at the time. When my mother got the letter notifying her that I had won,,she was skeptical. ‘nobody wins those things’. My sister still has the set of encyclopedias all these years later.
My older sister won at the national level in the late 1960's..She had sent her entry off, then waited for weeks.. Our parent's were blown away when they got the call from our local newspaper. She won an entire set of World Book Encyclopedias with the additional set of "Childcraft" books as well. She as well as her siblings used those books for many years. I especially remember the "Think & Do" volume of Childcraft. I set me on my path to crafting as a child, which I still do to this day. I was so proud ofmy Sister. Long story short... I STILL am! She went on to win Sterling Scholar in Art at her high school in the mid 1970's. I am fond of Cappy Dick for the encouragement it gave her to continue with her artwork. I am grateful to be a crafter. WTG Sis!!!!!!
In 1979, our regional paper (upstate New York, Times-Herald Record, based out of Middletown, NY) carried the Cappy Dick column. I won the at the local level, and at the national level for the coloring of a clown. One graphite pencil, one colored pencil, and one crayon did the trick. The grand prize was a set of AM/FM headphones, which in those days looked like noise cancelling headphones that you'd see at stock car races or construction sites these days, usually for operators of heavy machinery. Fond memories for sure! I'm 52 years old now; back then I was 9 years old.
Gregg A. Goldstein
I am now 66 years old. I won the coloring contest when I was 12 years old. I received a set of World Book Encyclopedias and the yearbook. They also did a little write up in the paper. It was pretty exciting at the time.
Cappy Dick was my go-to every week. I entered every contest and won quite a few prizes, nothing spectacular. But for any child, winning anything is exhilarating. Finding a small package addressed to me in the mailbox was thrilling.
I was about six or seven years old when I won the World Book Encyclopedia & Childcraft set for a coloring contest in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I was in first or second grade. Those encyclopedias got me and my sisters through high school. The PD sent a photographer out to our house. I have the photo and article in my scrapbook.
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