York cartoonist’s work helps celebrate peace activism
For decades, Walt Partymiller drew editorial cartoons for The Gazette and Daily, forerunner of the York Daily Record. This is one of his cartoons showing Linus Pauling that is part of a new Web site celebrating the scientist and the International Peace Movement. Background posts: McCarthy probe could not corral J.W. Gitt and Publishing legend Gitt vocal about nuclear power.
Nobel Prize laureate Linus Pauling was a friend and regular correspondent with J.W. Gitt, longtime owner of The Gazette and Daily.
Pauling and Gitt were both peace activists, and Gitt made sure Pauling and his views made their way onto the pages of his daily newspaper in York.
Pauling was profiled in a least three sympathetic Gazette and Daily editorial cartoons… .
Those cartoons appear on a new Web site dedicated to Linus and Ava Helen Pauling’s legacy of peace activism put forth by the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections.The site incorporates those York images among more than 500 digitized archival documents and about 90 minutes of audio and video footage.
A OSU press release states:
Alarmed by the use of atomic weapons at the end of World War II, Pauling, and his wife Ava Helen, spent countless hours over the next five decades raising their voices in protest against the dangers of radioactive fallout, weapons proliferation and the cultural effects of Cold War hysteria. Their efforts earned the Paulings both acclaim and enmity, though not always in equal measure. To some, the legacy of the Paulings’ peace work remains controversial, but few will deny the duo’s wide-ranging historical importance.
Substitute Gitt for Pauling and the statement would still be accurate.
The three Partymiller cartoons can be found at:
Rare Courage .
It Takes Lots of Courage .
‘Suddenly un-American’?
For more on the relationship of J.W. Gitt and Linus Pauling, see Mary A. Hamilton’s: “Rising from the Wilderness, J.W. Gitt and His Legendary Newspaper: The Gazette and Daily from York, Pa.” is available for $29.95 at the York County Heritage Trust museum shop, 250 E. Market St., York, or on the Web, http://www.yorkheritage.org.
