Stevan Dohanos TB Poster – Sept. 1951

So many famous people have called Lorain, Ohio their hometown that it might be easy to overlook Stevan Dohanos. And that’s a shame, because the nationally known artist and illustrator was successful in his field in a way that most people can only dream about.

Dohanos' many artistic accomplishments include creating more than 125 covers for The Saturday Evening Post and designing forty U. S. postage stamps. He also served his country as the chairman of the Citizen’s Stamp Advisory Committee, selecting the art for more than 300 postage stamps and designing some as well.

Seventy years ago this month, Mr. Dohanos was the subject of the article below, which appeared in the Lorain Journal on Sept. 6, 1951. It’s about his latest artistic endeavor, a poster for the Tuberculosis Association advocating getting a chest x-ray. The article relates how TB struck the Dohanos family, claiming several children – and almost the artist himself.

As the article notes, “Lorain’s most noted contribution to the art world has once again drawn on his hometown experiences to inspire a new art work.

“This time Stevan Dohanos remembered his poverty stricken childhood and a family ravaged by a disease when he created a poster which will be used in the fight against tuberculosis.

“This week a quarter of a million copies of the new poster will go to Tuberculosis Associations all over the nation. “Protect the Family Circle, Get a Chest X-Ray” pleads the poster, which carries Dohanos’ impression of a typical American family.

In years past the noted illustrator has delved into his Lorain background in creating other works. The poster used in the 1948 Red Cross campaign was his work entitled “Main Street America,” it was a direct result of his impressions growing up in Lorain.

This latest work is perhaps most directly linked with Lorain and its tragic impact on the Dohanos family. For the family, and the artist himself, know all too well what the dread TB germ can do.

“The artist was one of nine children growing up in South Lorain during the early part of the century. His parents, Elizabeth and Andrew Dohanos, were Hungarian immigrants who met and married in Lorain.

“His father struggled to bring up his large family on the meagre pay of a steelworker. As Dohanos recalls it now, “We lived in a small crowded house and had a bad diet.”

“In this house, as well as scores of similar Lorain homes of the period, disease found easy pickings. TB is the disease that hit the Dohanos family.

“Several of the undernourished children unknowingly picked up the germs. First to die was a daughter, Irene, who succumbed at 21.

“Then another child, Bert, showed evidence of the disease. After a 20-year battle he, too, died last spring.

“The artist himself almost had his career cut short by TB. In 1933, when he was 26, the disease sent him to bed for several months. He recovered and continued his rise in the art world until 1942 when it put him in a sanatorium for 11 months.

Dohanos beat the disease again, but for months after the last battle he had to take it easy, working only three or four hours a day.

“With this background the artist was readily responsive when the National Tuberculosis Association asked him to do a poster which would aid in the fight against the disease.

“Copies of the new poster are currently being distributed on a nationwide basis. They are expected to arrive in Lorain next week."

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I’ve written about Stevan Dohanos before, including this two-part series about his 1948 “Main Street America” Red Cross poster; a post about a 1952 Christmas-themed cover of the Saturday Evening Post; this multi-part series about my quest to figure out which Lorain house was featured on a 1946 Saturday Evening Post cover; and a post about a new 1968 stamp that Mr. Dohanos had designed.

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I couldn’t help but wonder whether the house in South Lorain that the Dohanos family lived in was still standing. The 1912 Lorain City Directory listings had Andrew and Elizabeth Dohanos living at 1557 E. 30th Street. (Stevan would have been about five years old then.)

The home is no longer there, replaced by modern, attractive housing owned by the Lorain Metropolitan Housing Authority. But appropriately, it is just a short distance from Stevan Dohanos Elementary School at 1625 E. 32nd Street.