Searching for Snooky …

By MARGARET ROSS

Former Historian, Arkansas Gazette

All the important events in the life of George Fisher that antedated World War II occurred in White County, and most of them within sight of the water tank at Beebe. Here he was born, lost his mother at the age of five, received most of his formal education, and began drawing cartoons. His father, Charles W. Fisher, gave him the idea for his first political cartoon during the Senate campaign between Carl Bailey and John Miller in 1937.

World War II yanked him out of Beebe Junior College, and plunked him down in England. In addition to his duties as an infantry soldier, he was a contributing artist for his regimental newspaper, using equipment borrowed from the Bournemouth Municipal Art College. Here he met a local art student, Rosemary Beryl Snook, whose friends called her Snooky.

In 1946 Fisher became staff cartoonist for the West Memphis News, where he got his initial taste of journalism. Three years later, he moved to Little Rock to work as an artist for the telephone company but withdrew to establish Fisher Art Service, with the telephone company as his first account. The STOP campaign, which was instrumental in resolving the Central High School integration crisis in the late 1950s, retained him to produce some cartoons, and revived his interest in political cartooning.

In the early 1960s, Jim Phillips, a novelist, convinced Fisher that he should return to political cartooning, pointing out the spectacular subject matter offered by the current governor, Orval E. Faubus. Fisher phoned Robert McCord, then editor of the North Little Rock Times, and arranged to do one cartoon a week. The Arkansas Gazette picked up the cartoons from the Times, and in 1972 contracted for two additional cartoons each week. In 1976 Fisher became the Gazette's chief editorial cartoonist.

About that time, he began weaving the word "Snooky" into his cartoons as a private joke between him and Rosemary. Eventually, the word leaked out, and looking for Snooky in shoe laces, beards and shrubbery became a popular game and competitive classroom exercise for school children.

Translating the often grim political situation into humor, without the diverting impediment of rhetoric, has helped a whole generation of Arkansans to put the issues of the day into perspective.