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      A giant passed this way, takingalmost all of the lasthundred years to do it.Herbert L. Block, who signed hiseditorial cartoons "Herblock," diedon Sunday, October 7, 2001, theday we started bombing Afghanistan,just six days short of his 92birthday.

      His death at just this momentwas "inappropriate," wrote MaryMcGrory, a Washington Post colleague."There never would havebeen a good time," she wenton, "but at this moment --when the worst threat sinceHitler is darkening our lives-- it is particularly hard totake." The next day, thePost, Herblock's home forthe last half century,started his obit at the bottomof the front page andjumped it inside to twomore pages. At the top ofthe front page were theheadlines announcing theair strike in bin Laden land.It was Herblock's fatherwho invented the portmanteausignature. While inhigh school, young Herbertwas sending drawings andwitticisms in to their localpaper's "contributions" column.Civilian contributorssigned their work with theirinitials or a pen name.Herbert's father suggestedthat his son combine hisfirst and last names by lettingthem share their commonconsonant.

      Herblock was -- is --a colossus astride the roadsof editorial cartooning. Noone has matched him in the lengthof his career: His first editorial cartoonwas published April 24, 1929;his last, August 26, 2001. That's 72years. He was in the army for threeyears (1943-45) during World WarII, but the 69 years of active editorialcartooning that remain still constitutea record. He cartoonedthrough 13 presidents, beginningwith Herbert Hoover. Two of them,Eisenhower and Nixon, repeatedlycanceled their subscriptions to thePost because of Herblock's cartoons.

      He is one of only five cartooniststo win three Pulitzer Prizes(1942, 1954, 1979), and he shareda fourth with the Washington Postfor its coverage of Watergate. Hemight've had a fifth (or a fourth ofhis own): The Pulitzer committeedeadlocked over Herblock and anothercartoonist in 1936, and,rather than acknowledge a tie, simplyawarded no prize that year. In1994, he was awarded the PresidentialMedal of Freedom, the nation'shighest civilian award. (LyndonJohnson almost gave him one in1967 but evidently had secondthoughts and passed on theopportunity, probably becauseof the cartoonist's oppositionto the President'sVietnam policies.)

      But it isn't the length ofHerblock's career or thenumber of awards he haswon that give him the staturethat inspires unqualifiedadmiration and envyamong his colleagues. Theyadmire him for his principledstand on publicpolicy and social issues; andthey envy him his unprecedentedindependence --his absolute freedom to expresshis opinions withouteditorial interference.Herblock's unwaveringliberalism and his trenchantand unrelenting assault onhypocrisy in a newspaperpublished in the seat of government(where there isplenty of political hypocrisyto assault) contributed tothe elevation of the WashingtonPost from a fourthratepaper in the city to afirst-rate paper in the nation.

      Herblock was as mucha part of the national institutionthat the paper became as the inkon its newsprint.

      Born in 1909, Herblock was 20when he went to work for the ChicagoDaily News, where he was thesecond-string editorial cartoonist.Vaughn Shoemaker was the firststringerwith his cartoon on thepaper's front page; Herblock's appearedon the editorial page.

      Herblock left Chicago in 1933 tojoin the staff of the Newspaper EnterpriseAssociation in Cleveland. Itwas while there that he won his firstPulitzer, but he almost wasn't therethen.

      In the spring of 1942, Herblockwas summoned to the New Yorkoffices of NEA, where he fully expectedto be fired by Fred Ferguson,the syndicate's president, who customarilyoccupied the opposite endof the political spectrum from thecartoonist. While Herblock wascooling his heels in Ferguson's waitingroom, the syndicate receivedword that he'd won the Pulitzer.

      One of the NEA editors tookHerblock in to Ferguson's office andbroke the news."The expression 'mixed feelings'never showed so clearly on aman's face," Herblock wrote afterwards.

      "Ferguson gave a sort of anguishedsmile. It was the only timeanyone at NEA had won such aprize, but it was the wrong personat the wrong time." Herblock wasn'tfired. But within a year, he was nolonger with NEA. He was in thearmy.

      In the autumn of 1945,Herblock, anticipating his releasefrom military service, was lookingaround for a berth with a newspaper.He rather liked Washington,D.C., and then, by chance, he metEugene Meyer, a millionaire whohad bought the Washington Post ata bankruptcy auction in 1933 andhad managed to keep the paperalive by injecting it frequently withfunds from his personal fortune.

      Meyer offered Herblock a job, andHerblock took it, starting early in1946. Meyer had told the cartoonisthe expected a cartoon for everyday the paper published, and sinceit published every day of the year,Herblock drew seven cartoons aweek for the first years of his employmentthere.

      For the first half-dozen years,he showed preliminary sketches ofcartoon ideas to an editor. But afterthe presidential election in1952, Herblock's cartoons went intoprint at the Post without let or hindrance.By this time, he'd coinedthe term "McCarthyism" (in a cartoonpublished March 29, 1950 --less than two months after JoeMcCarthy first attracted attentionby asserting that 205 communistsworked in the State Department).

      He'd published his first book in1952 and was firmly established asa journalistic power in the city aswell as in the nation.

      Katharine Graham, who succeededher husband Phil as publisher,once said: "Since he arrivedat the Post, five editors and fivepublishers all have learned a cardinalrule: Don't mess with Herb."

      Henceforth, Herblock was, in effect,the liberal conscience of the paper."His point of view was liberal," saidKatharine Graham, "and his instinctswere common-sensical."

      Doonesbury's Garry Trudeaudoesn't quite agree. AdmiringHerblock as a man of truly deepconviction, Trudeau said: "I neverthought of him either as a liberalor a conservative but as a satiristwith a satirist's conviction that becausethis is America there is alwaysroom for improvement. That kindof idealism and hope never wanedover the decades."

      The tireless crusader, however,had a distinctly human side thatshowed to everyone who knew him.Unmarried, his personal habits teeteredinto slovenliness. Sartorially,he was permanently rumpled. Hisoffice was a chaotic warren of stacksof old newspapers and magazines,clippings and discarded pieces ofclothing, and coffee cans filled withsoftlead pencils and used brushes.

      A Post colleague, Robert Asher,wrote: "Though he could boil downglobal complexities and put themin historical context brilliantly,Herb never could deal with the basicsof existence, such as how todrive, buy a new refrigerator, or getto Virginia." In the newspaper'sstaff directory, Herblock listed theWashington Post as his home, andhe ate most of his meals in thepaper's second floor cafeteria.

      Vitriolic in print, he was gentlein person. Unassuming and almostapologetic in demeanor, he punctuatedhis utterances with the mildestof exclamations -- "oh, hey,""golly," or "oh, boy."

      "All the energy and venom wentinto the cartoons," columnist DavidBroder said. Animator Chuck Jones,a friend, thought Herblock was "atiger posing as a possum." MaryMcGrory said: "Despite his preeminence,he never succumbed for asecond to the local disease, selfimportance,"and she went on tonote that "he preferred to communicatewith jokes and gags." AnotherPost reporter remembered adinner dance at the American Societyof Newspaper Editors at whichhe'd observed an exuberantHerblock dancing with an equallyexuberant Walt Kelly.

      Herblock padded around theoffices of the Post in carpet slippersor running shoes, wearing a plaidflannel shirt and a funny hat. Theshirt was his version of an artist'ssmock. The hat Herblock called hisThinking Cap: it was a toy helmettopped with a light bulb that thecartoonist could set blinking to indicatehe was having an idea. Hisdaily routine was unvarying. Hearrived at the paper after noon, andby five o'clock or so, he had concoctedfour or five ideas for a cartoon.

      Then came the legendary"five o'clock shuffle" as the cartoonistmade his way to the newsroom,the assortment of sketches for hiscartoon in his fist.Nearly six feet tall with a slightpaunch, a Jimmy Durante schnozand the visage of a slightly trimmerRodney Dangerfield, Herblock wasbent and slow moving in his lastyears, and he smiled as he shuffledalong, stopping to re-orient a lostcopy boy or to greet friends, inquiringafter their families. In the newsroom,he would approach a reporterat his desk and stand diffidently,silently, at one side, notwanting to interrupt. When the reporterlooked up, Herblock wouldapologize for the intrusion and say,in a voice vaguely reminiscent ofGoofy's, "Got a mo'?" The reporterinvariably did have a moment forHerblock, and so the cartoonistwould ask him to look over thesketches he'd brought along andsay which he liked best -- and, moreimportantly, which one had thefacts right. "Is this right?" Herblockwould ask. "Does this work? Is thisfair? Is this premature?" As McGroryobserved, here was America's premiereditorial cartoonist, "whofiercely fought off any editorial supervisionfrom above," seeking itfrom below, from some humblebeat reporter.

      After getting responses to hisday's crop of ideas, Herblock wentoff and drew the final version of oneof them. He inked with pen andbrush and then gave the picture avariety of gray tones by shadingwith a grease crayon on the pebblesurface of the paper.

      His cartoons are typically festoonedwith labels -- a nondescriptfellow is a "voter," a jar of cookiesis "tax rebate," a small child is "conscience,"and so on. And most ofhis caricatures, except for presidentsand the most well-knownpoliticians, carry their names ontheir sleeves for identification eventhough they are all, withoutquibble, readily recognizable likenesses,deftly wrought with slightbut telling exaggeration. This confettiof labels gave his work an oldfashioned patina; but in the ferocityof his attack, he is thoroughlymodern, even avant garde. And hiscaricatures are superior to most ofthe work of today's editorial cartoonists,who too quickly adopteach other's formulations andpeddle the resulting generic brandas the original article.

      Herblock wrote 12 books, includingone autobiography and oneabout a stray cat who took up residencewith him for a time. Theother ten were collections of hiscartoons accompanied by Herblock'stext, which supplied historicaland political background.His prose was as forthright andunaffected as his artwork. His firstbook is called The Herblock Book,and its first chapter is entitled "BeginHere."

      "I'd hardly be giving away anytrade secrets if I told you how abook like this comes to be written,"he starts off, "because I'm not reallyin the trade. In this particularauthor-reader relationship -- if itcan be called that -- we're bothstarting from scratch. ... What youseem to have got hold of here is akind of free-wheeling book of commentary.It's not a complete historyof political events, not a definitivework on any subject, and it's not'inside' anything except my head.... While you look at the pictures, Irun along on this sound track, tellingyou how I feel about some ofthe subjects in general, recalling afew incidents here and there, anddigressing every once in a while tomention something about the cartoonsthemselves."

      Herblock was one of the onlytwo cartoonists recognized by Editor& Publisher as belonging amongthe 50 "most influential" newspaperpeople of the 20th century.Charles Schulz was the other one.And now they're both gone. But,with Herblock as an exemplar, weshould not be downhearted. Heended his autobiography by talkingabout the opportunity that thenext day's cartoon offers, always,to compensate for whatever shortcomingtoday's cartoon might embody.And thus the last word in thebook about his life is a ringing joyfullyoptimistic exclamation: "Tomorrow!"We all have tomorrows. And,like Herblock did before us, tomorrowwe have another chance to doit right, to make another beginning,a better one.

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