UNIOPOLIS — The Uniopolis Historical Society will present “From Uniopolis to The Chicago Tribune: The Long, and Influential Career of Carey Orr, Editorial Cartoonist” with Dr. Donald Eberle on Sunday, Oct. 29, at 1 p.m. in the Uniopolis Fire House Meeting Room, State Route 67, Uniopolis. The program is free and open to the public and is offered in conjunction with Auglaize County’s 175th Anniversary and its autumn focus on artists-representing various media-from Auglaize County. The effort is entitled “Fall into the Arts for the 175th!”
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Carey Orr (1890-1967) was born in Ada, but the death of his mother when he was 18 months old changed the trajectory of his life. His father moved to Spokane, Washington (to found a sawmill) and Carey was raised by his maternal grandparents, Arnold and Rebecca Harrod Rinehart, in Union Township.
A semiprofessional baseball pitcher in his youth, Carey Orr took the money he earned from baseball and enrolled in the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. After a first newspaper job with the Chicago Examiner at fifteen dollars per week, Orr, at age 24, joined the Nashville Tennessean as a full-time editorial cartoonist. By 1917, with his cartoons appearing in many national publications, Orr accepted an offer to work for the Chicago Tribune, which featured his political cartoons on the front page for more than 46 years. Orr’s cartoons took on gangsterism, waste and corruption in government, prohibition, communism, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. Orr was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1960.
Eberle has taught United States and World History fulltime at Napoleon Area Schools since 2017. Prior to that he served as adjunct professor at Bowling Green State University, Defiance College, and Northwest States Community College. Eberle received his Ph.D. in History from Bowling Green State University in 2013.
Eberle’s current interest is the Mutt and Jeff comic strip, which he stumbled upon while reading local newspapers from World War I. Mutt and Jeff ran from 1907 until 1983 and is generally regarded as the world’s first continuing newspaper comic strip. The strip was wildly popular for much of its run and, not unlike Carey Orr’s cartoons from the Chicago Tribune, reflected and shaped the culture of the 20th century.
