OLD NEWS

Teenage artist had prize spot on Page 1

Page One of the Jan. 16, 1917 Arkansas Gazette featured a cartoon by Hubert Park, who was about 20 years old and had come to the paper's attention when he submitted cartoons at age 15. The area had received 5 1/2 inches of snow over the weekend.
Page One of the Jan. 16, 1917 Arkansas Gazette featured a cartoon by Hubert Park, who was about 20 years old and had come to the paper's attention when he submitted cartoons at age 15. The area had received 5 1/2 inches of snow over the weekend.

I had planned to tell you today about a goofy tribute (of sorts) to William F. Cody that I stumbled across in the 1917 Arkansas Gazette archives. Humorist William F. Kirk devoted one of his Little Bobbie's Pa columns to Buffalo Bill, who had died that January.

Maybe another day. As is my habit, I began research for today's Old News by opening the newspaper published on this date 100 years ago (Jan. 16, 1917) and ... huh? Why was there a cartoon in the middle of Page 1?

It was a big thing. The title -- "Nice Weather If You're an Eskimo" -- was larger than any other headline on the page, with the artist's name centered below it: Hubert Park.

Park drew five snowy scenes. The best word to describe the gags is "charming" (not "funny").

At first I thought, "Possibly this was a slow news day in Arkansas." A report below the cartoon confirms that:

Its Beauty Marred,

But Still Here

"Although some of it melted yesterday afternoon, the snow of five and one-half inches, which fell Sunday night, still is on the ground. ..." Also, the low was 16 degrees.

So, a slow news day, but a good one for the cartoonist. What a rare treat to have your work on the front page, right?

Turns out, Hubert Park's big cartoons appeared on 14 front pages from 1915 to 1918, beginning with the May 30, 1915, Gazette -- when he was 17 years old. Inside pages carried more of his work.

Since when do 17-year-olds get plum exposure in really very professionally edited newspapers?

Poking the archives for Huburt, Herbert or Hurbert Parks, I found him and his brother, John F. Park, on society pages. They were fine young fishermen. They were fine young musicians. They were fine young thespians. Hubert was an usher at some lady's anniversary party. He won a camera contest.

More ransacking turned up the mother, Eva Freeman Park, contributing information to at least three news stories from 1911 through 1913 -- stories based on letters from her relatives who were victims of anti-American violence during the Mexican Revolution.

Eva Park's obituary, Jan. 9, 1929, described her as the widow of a DeWitt lawyer; Hubert as a Little Rock newspaperman; and his brother as a lawyer. It added that she had been ill a long time and that all three of them shared a home at 701 Rector Ave. So the brothers supported the mother in her decline.

Who was Hubert's dad? The Historical Review of Arkansas mentions the presence in 19th-century DeWitt of the law offices of John F. Park. The Historical Report of the Secretary of State lists a John F. Park as state representative for Arkansas County in the 28th and 29th General Assemblies. A Gazette report has him elected as an alderman in DeWitt.

Genealogists could tell us more, but I gather he died in 1907 -- based on a 1909 Arkansas Supreme Court case described in The Southwestern Reporter, Volumes 129-130: the court was asked to rule on an appeal occasioned by the death of Park shortly before a verdict was rendered against one of his clients on Nov. 13, 1907.

It appears Eva moved to Little Rock, because the Sept. 1, 1912, Gazette had this feature story:

Little Rock's Boy Artist And One of His Cartoons

"In Hubert Park, aged 15, of 1401 Summit avenue, Little Rock has a youth who may some day leap into fame as a cartoonist. One of his efforts is herewith reproduced. It must be admitted that it is a trifle crude, as might be expected, considering his youth and lack of experience, but at the same time, it displays a considerable amount of ability.

"One point wherein he differs from the conventional youthful would-be artists is his originality. He submitted a number of drawings to the Gazette and each one embodied his own ideas. None of them had been pilfered from cartoons he had seen in publications. Most of them dealt with strictly local subjects, and there is a considerable amount of real humor in them.

"Hubert has never had any training, but he has received so much encouragement that he intends to take up this matter. He will enter the high school this fall and will take all the courses offered that will help him in his work. He has also written to an art school with a view to taking lessons by correspondence. Later, if he continues to show promise, he may enter some big art school.

"Hubert and his younger brother, John, are clever musicians and have played at many local entertainments. He plays the piano and John the violin. Hubert says he has been drawing pictures ever since he was nine years old.

"But, withal, Hubert is not of the youthful prodigy type. He is a modest, gentlemanly little fellow and a boy who has real red blood in his veins. He is as fond of outdoor sports as the average boy of his age, and is a baseball enthusiast. Many of his cartoons deal with the national game, and one or two of the cartoons he submitted to the Gazette dealt with the race in the Little Rock City League."

Set aside for today the question of the "prodigy type" and why articles about young achievers seem to feel a need to stipulate that the kids have red blood. Just know that the item included a full-length photo of young Hubert sitting near a piano.

On May 10, 1914, when he was 16 and a student at Little Rock High School, he illustrated a poster for the Arkansaw Travelers Association state convention. (The online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture says this was a social and business club offering death benefits to members, white men in any occupation that involved travel, especially sales.)

On July 30, 1914, the Gazette reported that the Third Division of the Circuit Court had removed "minor's disabilities" from one Herbert Park and John F. Park "in order that they might be enabled to transact their own business affairs." A similar report appeared in 1915, but only naming Hubert as needing to do adult business for himself.

He did, in fact, take a mail-order art course. The trade journal Cartoons Magazine included an ad from the W.L. Evans School of Cartooning in Cleveland that featured one of Hubert's front-page cartoons. I can't share the title here because it uses a word whose meaning has drifted into naughty territory since 1917, but it showed a policeman stalking a man he thought was buying hootch.

The ad quotes Hubert Park: "I owe my present position to the correspondence course I took from you -- and I'll tell anybody so."

Hubert stayed in newspapers. Fred William Allsopp's 1922 History of the Arkansas Press for a Hundred Years and More lists him as city editor of the Arkansas Democrat.

He married Nora Henry of Little Rock on July 1, 1925, at the parsonage of First Methodist Church. He died June 28, 1938, at age 41, in Carlisle, having retired from the Democrat due to ill health.

No mention of his youthful career as a cartooning prodigy.

Helpful Reader, do you know more?

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ActiveStyle on 01/16/2017

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