All of us grew up with cartoons and comics. The newspapers our parents read had comic strips and political cartoons. We’d ask them to explain the political cartoons, and when they’d finished, we’d be just as confused as before we’d asked.
In the months to come, OLLI Connects will frequently call on themes from the past to help us explore the present, and we are fortunate to have Diane Russell on our staff. She has a treasure trove of cartoons, political and otherwise, created by her father, Art Henrikson. She’ll introduce him to you today and share a few of his cartoons.
We hope to have at least one of Art’s cartoons in each upcoming issue, tying its creation—as best we can—to the theme of that issue. — Editors
Introducing Art Henrikson, My Dad
by Diane Henrikson Russell
The Art Henrikson that I knew as his young daughter acted like a kid himself. He spent his days drawing cartoons, playing Broadway musical numbers on our piano, and making up commercials about fake products on television.
Only later did I realize that not all dads spent their days doing activities which kids would enjoy. Other dads wore suits, commuted to Chicago, and were too tired to play with their kids at night. As you can imagine, my dad who worked at home was extremely popular with the neighborhood kids.
My dad’s father founded and conducted his own volunteer orchestra in Chicago, and my dad’s mother was the pianist for this musical group. Little did they know that Arthur Allen’s nickname of “Art” would represent his cartooning occupation. As a youth, my dad loved the fine arts and practiced his drawing, piano-playing and musical composition skills. A 1938 ½ Austin High School graduate, he was editor and cartoonist for his yearbook and the school newspaper.
My dad began journalism studies at Northwestern University in September 1939. He met my mother, Des Moines native Lois Wessling, at a dance the first week of college. He was on the editorial staff of the Purple Parrot, a Northwestern humor magazine. Many of his cartoons spoofing the campus and its leaders were featured in each edition.
The World War II draft interrupted my dad’s college career in August 1942. After graduating from OCS, my dad served as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Force Medical Corps in Walla Walla, Washington and two Florida locations. Once military administrators learned of my dad’s cartooning talent, they assigned him to draw both motivational and health cartoons for GIs worldwide. My dad finally graduated from Northwestern in June 1946 after his discharge.
In 1955, my parents and I moved from Chicago to northwest suburban Des Plaines, and my two younger sisters came along. My mom was my dad’s secretary, accountant, and marketing assistant. With persistence, my dad became an editorial cartoonist for the Des Plaines Journal, the Daily Herald, Rockford Newspapers, and 40 weekly and daily Illinois newspapers. In the 2000s, my dad drew humorous weekly cartoons for The Scribbler in the Tampa Bay Times, and he sold many cartoons to Woman’s World magazine. My dad became famous among our classmates for giving talks on cartooning to local schools and other groups.
My dad’s editorial cartoons reached beyond the Chicago area. They were published in Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year for many years. As a member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, my dad met and drew caricatures of several Presidents, including JFK, LBJ, and Richard Nixon, during annual conventions.
Diane Henrikson Russell, Curator of Henrikson Cartoon Archive and Contributor. Diane has been an OLLI Member since 2014. She has taken over 70 OLLI courses on leadership, radio, life story writing, Tai Chi, healthy aging, literature, science, politics, sociology, and humanities. Diane volunteers as a proofreader for the OLLI catalog and for OLLI Connects. Diane was Co-chair of the Volunteer Management Committee from 2019 through early 2023.
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