Bill Mauldin

Bill Mauldin was born in Mountain Park, New Mexico, in 1921, and started drawing young. He took a few courses at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and, in 1940 entered the Army and was assigned as an illustrator for the military's newspaper, The Stars & Stripes. He created two characters for which he will always be remembered: a pair of plain, tired but determined infantrymen named Willie and Joe. The two clicked with the average GI almost immediately, one of the reasons being that the brass hated them. Gen. George S. Patton despised them and tried to have the panel removed (and Mauldin court-martialed), but they became so incredibly popular among GIs that Time magazine actually featured them on its cover, and eventually Patton relented. After the war Mauldin did a panel for United Features Syndicate featuring Willie's and Joe's trials at home, dealing with social issues and attacking the Red Scare hysteria and the paranoia of the McCarthy era. In 1949 Mauldin was hired by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, wrote books and even appeared in two motion pictures: Teresa (1951) and The Red Badge of Courage (1951) (starring another World War II icon, Audie Murphy. In 1962 Mauldin was hired by the Chicago Sun-Times, where he stayed until he retired in 1991. Mauldin's work was for ordinary people who read the papers, trying to show reality spiced with humor. He was a supporter of civil rights and the environment, and took a strong stand against the war in Vietnam. When he won his first Pulitzer prize, Mauldin was the youngest man (at age 24) to ever win it. He won the Pulitzer again, and was honored with degrees from Connecticut Wesleyan University, Washington University (St. Louis), and Albion College. Mauldin married Norma Jean Humphries in 1942. They had two sons, Bruce Patrick and Timothy. After a divorce in 1946, Mauldin married Natalie Sarah Evans in 1947. They had four sons, Andrew, David, John and Nathaniel. Mauldin died in Newport Beach, California in 2003.