“One day your life will flash before your eyes.
Make sure it’s worth watching.”
— Gerard Way, American singer, songwriter, and comic book writer.
A life spent chasing news stories has lots of perks. Not necessarily monetary ones, but indeed many that are memorable. Besides permitting me to shake hands with U.S.
Presidents, it has also put me in conversations with celebrities in the business and entertainment world.
It has landed me a seat in at least two courtrooms.
One, the press gallery at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington D.C. to witness law argued at the highest level in the land as it applied to events on which I had reported.
The other, in a district courtroom, seated beside my attorney as the judge looked in my direction and said, “Will the defendant please rise.” Also, for points of law as applied to events bearing my byline.
Both great stories for another time.
The “bright lights with famous people” have been fun, but some of the best memories made were meeting people whose names are recognized by few. People like Barry McWilliams.
I bet you’ve never heard of him. I met Barry in the early 1980s.
Unfortunately, I learned only last week that he passed away more than a year ago at his home outside Whitehall, Montana, at the age of 79.
Barry McWilliams was born in 1942 in North Hollywood, California.
According to his obituary bio, he grew up in what he referred to as an “immigrant home” where three families shared a small three-bedroom house with wall-to-wall mattresses—a period he reportedly reminisced about as a simpler time with his sister and cousins.
His love of literature led him first to teach English, but that was not his last calling. Following a couple of other pursuits, he ultimately worked selling ads and shooting pictures for The Madisonian, a small weekly newspaper in Virginia City, Montana.
He began drawing his weekly editorial cartoon, “J.P. Doodles,” while working for The Madisonian before he “split a week’s worth of firewood for his family, bought a week’s worth of food, spent his last $20 on gas, and headed out across Montana on a late-November night with packets of cartoons.”
McWilliams ultimately created Doodles from four continents for more than 1,500 newspapers. I signed on for the weekly cartoon at the East Texas Light in Center in late 1982.
J.P. Doodles was a likable farmer type who dealt with small town issues like making ends meet, bad roads, taxes, kids, schools, weather — life as we know it.
McWilliams got his inspiration by traveling the country, visiting hundreds of small elementary schools, and cartooning about what he saw.
Barry came to Center on one of those jaunts shortly after I started running Doodles in the newspaper. For all the world, he struck me as a younger version of the older J.P. Doodles character in his cartoons. He arrived driving a highway- worn long-wheelbase pickup truck and wearing jeans, a plaid flannel shirt, cowboy hat, and boots. And that’s the same way he dressed when he engaged attentive young minds, including my daughter Robin, at Center’s Elementary School that day by teaching kids how to draw cartoons while talking to them about life in small towns across the U.S.A.
I ran his cartoons in Center in the 80s, Boerne in the Hill Country in the 90s, and The Monitor in Naples when I was there.
His monthly batch of cartoons always included a message that chronicled his travels. Plus, they often contained personal notes inquiring about what was happening wherever I was. Other times, he called from distant regions inquiring about how his cartoons were working and asking about any local issues to share as cartoon fodder.
True to the obit bio I read last week, Barry “was a character. Unique.
Unlike anyone you’ve ever met. He was an adventurer who hitchhiked around Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War to interview soldiers, joined a government trade mission to Asia, declared himself ‘shipwrecked’ on Flinders Island off the southern coast of Australia, and helped mastermind America’s biggest cattle drive in over a hundred years. He could walk into a restaurant and sit there for hours talking to complete strangers who quickly became friends.”
Not mentioned in the internet obit bio was an experience I recall him writing about in his weekly notes. A northern Alaskan stint spent in a cabin accessible only by boat or plane, enduring weather with daily high temperatures ridiculously below zero. He still brought J.P. Doodles to life from there, sending cartoons back to civilization on the weekly float plane that also brought supplies.
The obit concluded by announcing a celebration of life for Barry at the Whitehall Community Center. The public was welcome.
I’m grateful to this crazy business for the people it’s connected me with. I’m thankful for having known people like Barry McWilliams.
I have no doubt the celebration of life for him in Whitehall highlighted what Barry obviously lived for, a life worth watching.
