 of libraries here at the University of Tennessee and it's a great pleasure to have you all here tonight and it's a great honor for us to celebrate Charlie Daniel and commemorate his great gift to this library of 20,000 editorial cartoons. I thought of that, I thought of that as his life's work but he's still producing so we might have 20,000 more before we're finished, we'll look forward to that. Well we here in Knoxville are so lucky to have Charlie Daniel to help us start every day with comic relief, insightful wit, and intelligent commentary. Mr. Daniel has been the editorial cartoonist at the Knoxville News Sentinel since 1992. He began his career here in 1958 with the Knoxville Journal and again I'd like to welcome him as well as his wife Patsy and other members of the Daniel family. Thank you all for being here. Yes. Well as I mentioned we're here to celebrate Charlie Daniel and to commemorate his great gift of his personal archive to the UT libraries. His drawings are living artifacts of our time. Here in the UT libraries they will be preserved and made available for study by generations of scholars and students. The collection takes its place among many other national and internationally renowned collection and can be studied in context with related materials such as our university archives and our modern political archives. I always say that one of the most interesting and fun things about the job of a librarian or an archivist is collecting these great collections but then also seeing how people come to use them and you can never predict what students and scholars and others will do with these collections. Of course they'll write scholarly books and articles but collections like this play a vital role in the education of our students and more and more these days we're looking for opportunities not just to educate students in the classroom but to give them exposure to primary research material. So these are the the raw materials of research that we're celebrating tonight. Our special collection staff with Charlie's support and guidance has worked diligently to describe and organize these 20,000 drawings according to the social and political issues they elucidate. To share these wonderful drawings with as many people as possible we've also created an online exhibit which features more than a thousand of these cartoons and so they're available here to be studied to come on site to see them in an exhibit but people from around the world can now access these collections too and see Mr. Daniels wonderful work and you can view the material from the website on the monitors that we've set up upside we also have have the cartoons displayed throughout this floor and if you haven't had a chance I invite you to to linger after the remarks and and appreciate them. I'd like to personally thank Charlie also for one of the highest honors of my career. He provided a cartoon of me featured in our annual library development review when my wife saw it she said wow that is meaningful on so many different levels. I haven't had the courage to talk her through that and get her interpretation but one day I will. So thank you for that great honor for the great honor of donating your materials to to this to this wonderful library. Now I'd like to welcome the Knoxville News Sentinel managing editor Tom Chester for a few words. Tom directs multimedia content for the new Sentinel Knoxville Knox News dot com and all their other publishing platforms. He joined the new Sentinel in 1987 and has held a variety of roles there as staff writer and editor. Tom is a University of Tennessee communications graduate and also a University Air Force federal so we welcome you Tom. It's a privilege for me to be here tonight. I've known Charlie. When I first met Charlie in 1976 we both had brown hair and brown moustaches look at us now and so so lots of things have changed in that time and many things haven't changed and when when I first walked into the newsroom of the old Knoxville Journal it was downtown and I was a copy boy a lowly copy boy and he's already a star cartoonist. Today I'm a lowly managing editor and he's a superstar cartoonist so some things don't change so that's so when I first walked into the newsroom I saw Charlie and had a sweater and and as I say he had brown hair and a moustache he had his coffee cup and his pipe and we both we both smoke pops the old briar briar wood pops Dr. Grable I believe was the brand that we used and the cheapest tobacco we could find. The coffee was decent it was JFG thank goodness and so one of my one of my jobs is as the managing editor I still make the coffee today Charlie doesn't. One of my jobs as a lowly copy editor was to make the coffee. My cue to make the coffee was when I would see Charlie standing in the doorway of the coffee room cup dangling from one finger pipe in the other looking. That was my cue get up from your desk run to the coffee room. Charlie never said a word he didn't have to he just stood there cup dangling from one finger pipe in his other hand. I'd go into the coffee room make the coffee turn around Charlie was gone and I thought I just made this coffee where is Charlie? I look around Charlie's in my chair and I'm thinking should I ask him to get out of my chair well you know being a lowly copy boy and he being a star cartoonist I didn't ask him to get out of my chair. When the coffee began to make and you could smell that everyone here or most folks here probably smell that JFG just percolating in the morning in the mid morning in the afternoon and evening you smell it and so Charlie would get out of my chair so I could resume my work Charlie would get his coffee replenished and he would go sit in someone else's chair. So as you can see being a star cartoonist you can sit where you wish you can do what you wish excuse me. I've got three to five minutes to try to summarize 36 years that I've known my good friend Charles Rufus Daniel. It's impossible to do. Charlie's son and I Charlie used to bring his son up to the newsroom we would talk music for hours and Charlie come get him and take him home I'm glad he never told his dad everything we talked about but with Charlie it's Charlie followed me to the new Sentinel I guess was one highlight of my career I left the journal in 1987 went to the new Sentinel five years later he followed me I like to think that way. Charlie's I'm like the Clarence Clemens and he's like Bruce Springsteen you know or I'm like Keith Richards and he's Mick Jagger you know so those are the comparisons that we make over the years I know we may not look at now but we're you know we're still holding on for our age and so but Charlie the thing the thing about Charlie is if you think about 20,000 plus cartoons in the collection here Charlie has done thousands more that he's given to Steve to to me I have a personal collection at my home it's not open to the public thank you but it is it is just great Charlie would hear something that someone said and the next thing I would know I'd have this wonderful cartoon they're on my wall and when the SDX a few years ago he did a great cartoon that's on my wall signed and and these things and and Charlie has never turned down a cause his work is is throughout the community it's I struggled with with what to say about Charlie tonight I wanted to tell him how much I you know have enjoyed working with him and also I wanted to say some things that I never get to say with Charlie Charlie will come through he does most folks don't know but Charlie will do three or four cartoons and then there's one that appears in the newspaper I'm fortunate to have some of those that didn't appear if you think the ones that are in the paper really great y'all to see the ones that aren't they're great Charlie would come by the office and he doesn't doesn't say a lot to me other than you know standing in the doorway of the coffee room but he would come by the office he'd just hand me a cartoon I'd look at it and I'd go you're going to get emails you're they're going to be Charlie shake his head and leave so in a couple of days I'd come into the office and there'd be three or four emails lying on my desk and and the Charlie gets voluminous emails and Charlie brings me the good emails these are the ones that begin Daniel you moron Daniel you're so soft morrick Daniel Rosie's diner these are the good ones these are the great compliments that Charlie shares with me the really good cartoons I get to see them of a morning Charlie comes in I come in about six Charlie comes in around seven or so and and so there are a couple of other guys who come in we all race to open the paper after 36 years I'll see a race to open the paper each morning see what it is even if I've seen it the day before just in case he changed it and and so we all we'll all get up and I'll go back by Charlie's office he goes down a hallway and he's on my left and I'll go you're a very sick man Charlie so then I then I go back to work Charlie never says a word in a couple of days he'll do another commentary on and I'm thinking and then I swear by the end of the week I've got to go back there again Charlie never says a word these these are the points and I say this with love and affection and admiration because Charlie Daniel has passion for what he does as an editorial cartoon is the political the social commentary that he presents is is unbelievable he loves this community he loves the people that's in it the things that he says and he does they are meant to evoke some sort of emotion response from us be it anger be it joy be it tears be it laughter or when you laugh two tears which is often the case that happens in our office it may not be the case when some people call to the office but you know it's interesting you know I get the phone calls I handle complaints that Charlie Daniel he's democrat Charlie Daniel he's republican can you guys get you know and I'm going he's doing a great job because you know he's got all mad and uh and and most of you are if you're not familiar with work spend the time look to the 20 000 cartoons that he has done I there's just I don't know what to say about his passion his courage to speak his mind what he says and does is meant to to make us think to make us act to make us do to make us ashamed at times as well we should be to make us proud to be in this community to make us want to evoke change that's what he does each and every day I went back to Charlie's office today in closing and uh Charlie wasn't there so I got to sit in Charlie's chair I told him that we should probably like I could probably sign up 15 or 20 people tonight at 10 bucks a head just to go sit in Charlie's chair it's uh the chair is a wreck it's it's just it's a wreck it really is but I but I sit before his board his uh his light board I don't know what the proper words are for the tools that he has and his markers his pencils his rulers the the scribblings that he has on the wall the the papers he surrounds himself with the the reading material the wall street journal New York Times and and I sat there and I and and I thought wow this is this is where the magic happens every single day this is where the magic happens and I would like to say that I got up and and I would just had wow but unlocked Charlie my mind was blank I don't have this insight this this thought process that he has that he can say with a cartoon in three or four words that it would take me a thousand words to say and I'm not sure you'd understand it he does that's my friend Charles Rufus Daniel well let's go home thank you Tom my friend Tom is a uh real newspaper man I'm not uh Harry Hirschfield who's a cartoonist in a humorous which I hope is redundant asked his editor if in fact a cartoonist was a newspaper man and the editor replied uh is a barnacle a ship Tom is a real newspaper man and uh in journalism school they they teach you the four words uh who what where when and and and in cartooning school they teach you the two w's yeah that's what four w's two w's in cartooning school they teach you the two w's westerly rabbit so uh I want to uh recognize Patsy and my son Charles who came all the way from St. Louis Missouri today with his son Chip whose real name is Charles and you think we're original my daughter Sarah Sarah has moved all over the country but uh she's now moved back to Knoxville to Broadway because seven tenths of a mile from us and which makes her mama and I quite happy uh Patsy's uh my bio reads uh I married my childhood sweetheart Patsy's uh bio reads she married her high school sweetheart we're both talking about the same people it's just a different view of history uh in the second grade I went to Patsy's house and took her a box of Valentine's candy uh she added it to the stack of Valentine's candy she had gotten that day and she finally uh got around to me uh when we're juniors in high school so uh which is why the uh bio was read childhood sweetheart high school sweetheart so uh several years ago I was at a Christmas party uh at Nathan and Mary Ford's house in Parrotsville in Cox County and uh I met Barbara Dooley there and she was the dean of the library then and she approached me about giving my collection to the library now Betsy Cretemore Jr had been after me for years you know said you ought to give UT your cartoons and I'd say oh shucks blush and all that but uh Barbara really said well let's get together and have lunch and and talk about it and so uh so we did and and she persuaded me that uh I should do this and so I agreed and then Barbara would call and say can we come get the cartoons and I would procrastinate and say no not right now and she would call and say can we come get the cartoons and I'd say wait a while and so Barbara moved on and uh Jennifer Jennifer Bills took over the uh hard task of uh prying the cartoons away from me uh but Jennifer did it right she skipped me and went straight to Patsy and Patsy wanted to get those things out of the garage and so uh they came and got them well the first time they were gonna they called and said we're coming to get them and I said no no wait wait so we put it off a week and then uh they came and got them and I I don't know why I was holding on to them I wish I'd given them up way back when Becky first suggested it but uh I uh I want to thank uh uh Steve Smith and the library and Jennifer Bills for for prying those away from me and uh Alicia and Elizabeth Wilson and Justin who did all the heavy lifting and uh Erwin and Seth and Richard who uh digitized them is that how you say it digitized them because you can go on the uh internet now and and see them all so I'm I'm really grateful and Patsy and I last night spent about two hours uh on their website looking at these uh cartoons and uh uh the that was a lot of cartoons the uh the good the bad and the ugly because uh some of the early ones you know uh I wasn't too sure about uh and clinical counseling there's a process known as uh paradoxical therapy it's a way in which the uh counselor will will exaggerate a situation to the point of being ridiculous that uh thus making the uh counsel Lee laugh at his or herself which I I think is what uh we as cartoonists are trying to do uh J. Ding Darling uh said the editorial cartoon is that humicoded capsule by means of which the uh sound sober judgment of editorial minds are surreptitiously gotten down the throats of an apathetic public uh I love that one uh every name Robert's junior on the other hand wrote uh the editorial cartoon is the most uh useless and anti-intellectual feature in modern journalism a political cartoon is nothing more than a wisecrack reducing a complex problem into a one-liner the the best uh editorial cartoons that is those that stir the blood if not the mind exercises and then demagoguery all editorial cartoons should go back to join department store ads Mr. Roberts jr was an editorial writer uh the best definition of an editorial writer is one that hides in the bushes doing the battle and when the battle is over comes out and shoots the wounded so uh an editorial writer is really nothing more than uh an editorial cartoonist who can't draw and an editorial cartoonist is nothing more than an editorial writer who can't spell so the big difference is the difference between uh Leroy Page and and Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge uh wrote in his epic poem like one that on that's on a lonesome road duff walking fear and dread and having once turned round walks on and turns no more his head because he knows a frightful fiend duff close behind him tread uh about a hundred years later Leroy Page said the same thing when he said never look back something may be gaming on you editorial lighters uh light it like uh uh Samuel Taylor Coleridge very eloquently and cartoonists do it like uh Leroy Page where you get a laugh at others and you remember it so uh then there's my definition uh which goes the editorial cartoonist through his uh keen wit and artistic ability makes uh profound and thought-provoking statements on matters political and social confronting his community state nation and world big deal uh my uh my barber back growing up in Weldon did the same thing while giving me a haircut uh Weldon barbers were the were the uh talk radio people of the 30s and 40s uh they had all the answers they could they could have disbanded on on politics and sports and theology and and philosophy and history and you name it uh they had the answer uh Charles Schultz's uh father was a barber charles Schultz you know was the creator of peanuts no god created peanuts uh here's a poem i wrote god made the trees and the bees and the birds and the flowers i could go on for hours god made lots of stuff god made man man made snuff now the point of that of course is too often we give card credit for things that are man made uh uh floyd the barber was expounding on love and andy taylor said uh floyd what do you know about love and floyd very emphatically said i've been a barber for 30 years and that was answer enough uh i got most of my theology from uh old bob hope movies the road shows i think it was the road to utopia and and uh darthel amore was in her salon and and and bob hope was giving her the once over and darthel amore said fate has thrown us together and bob hope says uh you weren't thrown together baby that took that took planning so uh charles schultz wrote uh if you don't say anything in a cartoon you might as well not joy uh him of which does not say anything is worthless humor i contend cartoonists should be given their chance to preach so i just took my chance and did my preaching so we'll move on i have i have a peanuts cartoon hanging up next to my you probably saw it next to my lightboard and and lucy is on her hands and knees with the crayon and she tells charlie brown uh i've decided to go into political cartooning and charlie and she said i'm going to ridicule everything and charlie brown says uh i understand lucy by the use of ridicule you hope to point out our faults in government and thus improve our way of life and lucy said no i just want to ridicule everything i confess that we as cartoonists do do a lot of ridiculing uh cartooning basically is a negative form of art we we rally say anything nice about anyone we mostly uh ridicule uh mark Russell the piano playing humorists uh refer to a cartoon as instant freeze frame ridicule uh we do like to uh ridicule i also admit that uh editorial cartooning is an unfair form a lot we we stretch both face and fact we we miss quote we twist quotes we make up outrageous quotes and insert them into balloons over politicians heads uh we we we lie but we do these things uh to reveal the truth so so to uh paraphrase what harry screely said about the press uh i say then held to the cartoonist uh chosen guardian of freedom strong sorghum of justice uh bright sunbeam of truth i was a sophomore in high school and the pretty lady uh looked up from the match cover and subductively said draw me and i drew her and i mailed her off to the art school in minneapolis minnesota a couple of weeks later i come home from school and there in my living room is a fella from the art school in minneapolis minnesota telling my mother that her son had great promise and i proved it because on that day when my mother said do you promise that you will work diligently if i buy this car correspondence course and i promised and i waited anxiously you know for it to alive and then the day it came it they came with a join board which i still have by the way and a set of uh number two pencils a big fat eraser and lesson number one which consisted of uh drawing rectangles triangles and squares rectangles triangles and squares oh my rectangles and triangles and squares i never finished lesson one never my mother never let me forget that at 105 she would remind me when are you going to finish lesson one had i finished lesson one and mailed it off to the art school in minneapolis minnesota it probably would have been graded by charles schultz he had just gotten out of the army he went to work for the art school in minneapolis minnesota while he was working on this comic strip he entitled uh little people and uh somebody at the syndicate switched names and put peanuts up there but uh had i had i finished lesson one uh charles schultz would have discovered me no doubt and asked me to come help him with join little people but uh that's gone so uh after i'd been at the journal fall out of 10 years or so uh my mother was visiting us and she was looking at my work and she said uh son your your work almost looks professional patty complains that my head is uh so full of song lyrics or sports trivia lines from cartoons and loony tunes and there's no room for uh going to the store remember go to the store and buy some milk patty did you remember to stop at waggles and pick up the milk me know but i remember dying of washington singing and when my life is through and the angels asked me to recall the thrill of them all i'll tell them i remember you well that obviously didn't go over and so i went back to waggles and i got i got the milk but uh i do finally remember uh the editors uh in my life and there was a uh lewis carol and ediota who was the editors at the daily tar hill who who told me that okay we'll run your cartoons and we'll pay you 50 cents a cartoon and so i said great and then the next year fred polidge was the editor of the daily tar hill and we had the same deal i i i tried to work them up to 75 cents but uh no way and then there was roland gettis who ran my stuff in the uh the biweekly chapel hill newsreel and it was uh raiman gettis we called him foo and foo and i made up this this uh uh letter may of my stuff and we we sent it out to uh 40 newspapers all over the south uh we wanted to uh keep it in the south so i wouldn't have to learn a new language so um out of the 40 newspapers i got one positive reply and that was from gael smith of the noxford journal who i will forever be grateful for because because he gave me an opportunity when 39 other papers said nah forget it so uh and then there was steve unfreeze who who after mr smith died steve was the editor for a short while and it was steve who who talked me out of putting the the captions in print above the cartoon and start using balloons in the cartoon because i was getting so wordy they were it was getting to be three and four lines of type above the cartoon and he said well why don't you just light it in there so uh so i started doing that and then bill childris came along and he was at uh and it was uh bill childris who who turned me from vertical to horizontal uh speaking about the way the cartoon went in the paper uh and it was also bill childris who who got me started into public speaking uh he came to me one day and said uh i want you to speak to my optinist club and i said i don't i don't do that uh cartoon it should be seen and not heard and he said you didn't understand i want you to speak to my optinist club so from then on i started doing the public speaking that uh then one mac my hand came and he turned me over to barry henison because one couldn't handle me and so and barry henison and i he was a great pipe smoker and he and i were sitting in that back room and puffed away on our pipes and when they banned smoking in in in the building i thought that was the end of my career because i thought it was all connected pipe dreams and smoke and ideas but that wasn't so so uh and then in in december of uh 1991 when the journal sank uh harry moscos came and and fished me out of the drink and bought me downstairs and turned me over to hort kennedy uh and hort was the editorial page editor and he and i worked great together for many years and then jack megalore came and jack is the one who got rosie into the paper uh and in 2007 he came to me and said we need something at the top of the editor at the perspective page and and could you come up with something and the light bulb went off which is what cartoons work we wait for the light bulb and the light bulb went off and uh we put rosie up there and uh so i'll never forget any of these guys it takes a village of editors to get cartoons on the editorial page uh i'll close with uh few of my favorite letters and emails here's one from december 2nd 1958 dear charles i appreciate your cartoon in the august 29th now i don't know why it took from august disease summer for him to appreciate this cartoon but i appreciate your cartoon in the august 29th edition of the noxial journal but you must not have seen me in the way of beauty for some time so i'm sending you a picture my kindless regards sincerely that's the ski father he sent me his picture and i've got it hanging up in my den map along with the letter okay here's another one november the third 1959 dear charles thanks for sending the original of your cartoon on the baseball hearings i will have it framed and hang it in my office i believe there's a little improvement in my portrait with kind regards essus we got on a first name basis in less than a year december 21st 1966 uh here mr daniel uh mr wilis exo president special agent in charge of our noxial office has forwarded me your excellent cartoon which appeared in the noxial journal it was a pleasure to receive it and i do not want to miss the opportunity without thanking you for autographing it to me sincerely j edga hoover and the balance hangs out uh dear mr daniel i have noted with interest your cartoons you tell them bud which appeared in the march 26th issue of the noxial journal i would appreciate receiving an original of the cartoon if it's agreeable for you those that i might add it to my personal collection sincerely james a hofer okay here's some updated email uh this one was sent to jack mackereloy uh your cartoonist guy daniel should put a heading above his cartoon saying he's a raging liberal if obama wins election in four weeks the only people getting carved up will be the children in our country due to the amount of control spending uh this was about the cartoon i did of big bird like a turkey with with big bird's legs sitting up in the air and so uh then i get this one have you ever drawn a cartoon that was favorable to obama question mark so those two balance there daniel c with marginal art skills we'll stop there this is another one to the editor uh this was after i did they were voting on guns in in uh parks and i did uh uh gun smoky and i had smoky the bear with packing he was getting he was getting ready to draw so editor okay okay all right already we get it your cartoonist is anti-gun we might remind the gentleman that unlike political cartoonist guns can actually perform a useful function we turned that one over to the fbi dangl i wonder almost on a day-to-day basis how you got to be the central cartoonist your cartoons are drawn like that of a high school which by the way is a promotion from the guy who wrote me and said uh his 80-year-old granddaughter could draw better with crayons uh like that of a high schooler your cartoon went borders on zero roses diner is tired and old school i did a cartoon of of it showed a church and it was a pleasant valley methodist united methodist church and out of the church was this balloon and it was saying calm down miss quibi uh method free tennessee is not a baptist plot to get rid of the methodist it's a governor's programs against methamphetamines so i get this this letter daniel i'm highly offended by your cartoon in today's paper how stupid do you think methodists are stupid enough to buy your paper but not for long you owe all united methodists an apology the reverend sincerely reverend whoever uh i wrote him back and and said on and answered your question on how stupid i think methods are uh my wife was a methodist and she married me so i did this cartoon i did this cartoon on uh christmas eve on the old journal the effort and i was drawing i'm standing up and it shows the house with the lights and the the tree and the wonder and mary and joseph and the donkey are out here out front and the guy's out front and he's saying uh gee folks i'm sorry but it's christmas and the kids are all home and aunt pat is here we just don't have any room try the motel in pixely and i thought that was uh right on you know for christmas eve cartoon and i get this letter uh dated december 24th he wrote it on the day it came out so he was upset uh mr daniel i thought your cartoon and the december 24th paper was in very poor taste i don't appreciate it and i'd like to encourage you to never under any circumstances be light-hearted about the lord jesus christ sincerely any science uh i always thought uh light-hearted was the opposite of uh dark-hearted and and heavy-hearted so i wrote him back and uh did mr uh january the second did mr so-and-so uh i always thought very poor taste referred to my wife past his cooking not my cartoon you didn't understand the meaning of the december 24th cartoon or we're looking at two different cartoons sincerely uh charles daniel then i get this letter january the fifth day mr daniel i thought your letter january the second was in very poor taste i don't appreciate it and i would like to encourage you to never under any circumstances be light-hearted about your wife past his cooking sincerely past the daniel same jerry when wrote a book called the humor of a country lawyer and uh in the preface he said uh humor is one of god's most marvelous gifts humor gives us smiles laughter and gaiety humor reveals the roses and hides the thorns humor makes our heavy burdens light and smooths the rust spots in our pathway humor endows us with the capacity to clarify the obscure to simplify the complex to deflate the pompous to porn and moral to adorn a tale uh i believe in humor and and that's what i've dedicated my life to and thank you so much for coming