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February 26, 2005
Ed Valtman Dead at 90
By Valerie FinholmEdmund S. Valtman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for The Hartford Times, died January 12 at Duncaster retirement home in Bloomfield. Conn. He was 90.
Valtman won the Pulitzer in 1962 for his work the year before.
Colleagues on Friday remembered him for his wit and his ability to capture the essence of the people he drew.
"Ed was a great caricaturist," said Don Noel, head of the Times editorial department for many years while Valtman worked there. "I enjoyed watching him develop the signature features that he would use with dozens of prominent people in Connecticut.
"He would sketch 18 noses until he got it just right," Noel said. "He did [Gov.] Ella Grasso beautifully. He caught her beautifully. The baggy eyes."
In four decades of cartooning, Valtman’s targets ranged from local politicians to presidents to international leaders.
"He always made his point, but it usually had a sense of humor so people who didn’t agree usually enjoyed it and were stimulated by it," Noel said.
In a 1992 interview with Courant Staff Writer Rick Green, Valtman said much of his commentary focused on world communism because of his upbringing and subsequent escape from Estonia, then occupied by the Soviets.
Valtman told Green that he created his first cartoon at age 15, after watching his older brother draw and seeing his father create designs on the cakes and cookies he made as a baker. By the 1940s, Valtman was drawing cartoons for two Estonian newspapers. In 1949 he emigrated to New Jersey, and in 1951 he moved to Hartford.
He told Green that he got his ideas from arguing issues in the newsroom and from reading the daily newspapers.
"You might read a little thing and then it gives you an idea right away," he said. "And then I would just start doodling on paper. It’s really hard to explain what happens. Suddenly there are certain thoughts or associations that bring it all together."
Courant cartoonist Bob Englehart said of Valtman: "He was an talent and an inspiration to me. I respected and enjoyed his work."
–The Hartford Courant