Page "National Cartoonists Society" Paragraph 15

: At the time I joined they were meeting at the Lambs Club in New York.

It was an actor's club, which was actually a copy of an actor's club in London.

When the NCS started, Rube Goldberg, Russell Patterson and Bob Dunn had become very friendly with a lot of actors.

Goldberg had even done a couple of movies and Dunn was on early TV doing a program called Quick on the Draw.

They had gotten the club to allow them to use the premises as a meeting place for cartoonists.

When I joined, they had what they called a Shepherd — after all, the meetings were at the Lambs Club — who was the president, Billy Gaxton.

The meetings were monthly, and there would be a dinner afterwards.

There was always a lot of drinking going on.

For Pete's sake, there was a bar right there in the meeting room.

In order to get the meeting going, they would always have to pry the guys away from the bar.

The first guy I met, sitting right across from me at my first dinner, was Raeburn Van Buren.

He was the creator of Abbie an ' Slats, and this was always a strip I liked.

What was so nice was that even though he was much older, he just talked to me like a fellow professional.

At that first meeting there was Al Capp, Walt Kelly, Alex Raymond, Ernie Bushmiller, Milton Caniff, all of them just sitting there, big as life.

As I went to more meetings, I got to talk to a few of them.

To me, it was unreal that so many legends were just standing around talking shop and gossip with each other.

They were all, so, let's just say, normal.

These were guys I had idolized for years.