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December 20, 2003
Arkansas' George Fisher dies at 80
TOM PARSONS / Associated Press Writer LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Political cartoonist George Fisher, who used his art to skewer Arkansas political figures for decades but kept their respect and friendship, has died. He was 80.
Fisher's partner of 14 years, Judi Woods, said Tuesday that she found Fisher dead at his home late Monday afternoon after not being able to reach him on the phone.
"Arkansas has lost one of its best," she said.
Fisher's signature cartoon was the outline of the profile of Gov. Orval Faubus within the branches of a farkleberry tree, which he penned after Faubus claimed to have stopped state highway workers from cutting down a giant farkleberry while traveling in northern Arkansas.
Another widely remembered Faubus-era cartoon portrayed Faubus, who exercised wide control over the General Assembly, speaking to the legislature -- with each of the members themselves bearing a great resemblance to the governor.
Playing on Bill Clinton's youth, Fisher took the ex-governor and ex-president on figurative rides atop a tricycle and in a pickup truck.
"George Fisher was a priceless Arkansas treasure," Clinton said in an e-mail message from his communications office.
"He loved our state and our country and he was the best cartoonist I ever saw. He took me from a baby carriage to a tricycle to a bicycle to a pick-up truck. It was a wonderful ride," said Clinton, who at age 32 was the nation's youngest governor in 1978.
"While his wit could be biting, he didn't have a cynical bone in his body. He was a genuine patriot. Our country needs more like him. Hillary and I loved him and will miss him very much," Clinton wrote.
Fisher was born in 1923 just outside Searcy. Funeral services will be at 2 p.m. Friday at Beebe First United Methodist Church, and burial will be at Beebe Cemetery.
In a 2000 interview for an oral history of the Arkansas Gazette, Fisher said he'd been drawing since his early youth and was inspired by his father. Fisher said he started a school newspaper while in the eighth grade, the Beebe Grammar School News, where he published cartoons.
He kept drawing into the 21st century. Woods said Fisher met his Monday deadline for a cartoon for the weekly Arkansas Times and had completed a cartoon for Christmas Day, but had not written the caption.
"He was doing what he loves," she said. "He was working on his art in his studio on his drawing board."
Fisher served in the Army during World War II, as a member of a 105 mm howitzer crew with an infantry unit that fought in the Battle of the Bulge at Bastogne, Belgium.
He met the woman who became his wife, Rosemary Snook, in England in 1944, when she was a student at an art school and the Army had made arrangements for Fisher to use the school's facilities to create artwork for a military publication. They were married in 1946, and she died in 1983.
For many years, fans of Fisher's cartoons would look for his wife's nickname, Snooky, incorporated into some small detail of each piece of art.
Fisher got his start at the weekly West Memphis News in the late 1940s, then began drawing for the North Little Rock Times when he moved to central Arkansas and opened a commercial-art agency.
Bob McCord, who owned the weekly North Little Rock Times when Fisher began drawing cartoons for the publication, said Fisher had already acquired a reputation based on his cartoons at West Memphis.
"They were so good, people began passing them around," McCord said.
When Fisher's cartoons began appearing in the North Little Rock paper, they were an immediate success, McCord recalled, and the Arkansas Gazette began running them in its paper every Sunday.
In 1976, Fisher went to work as a full-time political cartoonist at the Gazette.
"The beauty of it was he not only had this great sense of humor, but he also had this great talent to draw," McCord said. "He didn't have to put these people's names on them, you knew who they were."
Fisher is remembered for originating symbols still associated with several politicians and organizations -- like the tricycle for Clinton. During the 1960s battle to save the Buffalo River from a dam that would have been built by the Army Engineers, Fisher portrayed officials of that agency always wearing a "Keep Busy" button, with pith helmets atop their heads and short-trousered uniforms.
After Gov. Frank White signed a law allowing teaching of "creation science" in the state's schools, he began showing up in Fisher's cartoons with a banana -- a reference to the Arkansas "monkey trial" in federal court that resulted in a declaration that the law was unconstitutional.
David Pryor, as governor before he was elected to the U.S. Senate, showed up in Fisher cartoons with a hound dog, often in the back of a pickup truck. As governor, Pryor proposed a plan to broaden the taxation powers of local governments that was dubbed the "coon-dog plan" because Pryor said that local governments, if they wanted, could use new money to buy a 'coon dog.
"All these politicians that he took shots at loved him," Woods said. "He never got personal, he kept it professional."
McCord also recalled Fisher's love for the music of the Ozark Mountains. For several years, Fisher played guitar and sang with a group that offered renditions of mountain folk songs.
Fisher hosted a Fourth of July picnic each year, McCord said.
"All these newspaper friends of his and a lot of politicians (came) and he always imported musicians -- some of them old friends, some of them new, young people," McCord said. "And he would always get up there and sing."r
