Mort Walker (1923-2018) *94

was an American comic strip writer, best known for creating the newspaper comic strips Beetle Bailey in 1950 and Hi and Lois in 1954. He signed Addison to some of his strips. Walker was born in El Dorado, Kansas, as the third of four children in the family. After a couple of years, his family moved to Amarillo, Texas, and later to Kansas City, Missouri, in late 1927, where his father, Robin Adair Walker (d. 1951), was an architect while his mother, Carolyn Richards Walker (d. 1970), worked as a newspaper staff illustrator. He was of Scottish, Irish and English descent. One of his ancestors was a doctor aboard the Mayflower.

During his elementary school years, he drew for a student newspaper. He attended Northeast High School, where he was a cheerleader, school newspaper editor, yearbook art editor, stage actor in a radio show and ran neighborhood teen center that belonged to several orgnisations. He had his first comic published at age 11 and sold his first cartoon at 12. At age 14, he regularly sold gag cartoons to Child's Life, Flying Aces, and Inside Detective magazines. When he was 15, he drew a comic strip, The Lime Juicers, for the weekly Kansas City Journal, and working as a staff artist the same time for an industrial publisher. At age 18, he was the chief editorial designer for Hallmark Brothers (later Hallmark Cards) and was instrumental in changing the company's card from cuddly bears to gag cartoons, which is more suitable for soldiers.

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