John T. McCutcheon (1870-1949)

To help celebrate Purdue University’s 150th anniversary in 2019, the Purdue University Retirees Association (PURA) recruited some of its members to portray historic characters from Purdue’s past.

The reenactors researched their characters, developed costumes and personas, then appeared at a number of public events sharing the stories of these important Purdue figures with the public.

Robert (Pete) Bill (left), pictured here, portrayed John McCutcheon. David Caldwell, as Orville Redenbacher *******

“I, John T. McCutcheon, am a proud Purdue alumnus of the distinguished Class of 1889. I am sometimes referred to as the “Dean of American Cartoonists”, which I surmise was somehow related to my 1931 Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoon as no one else ever refers to me as “Dean” of anything. I am also a proud former citizen of Tippecanoe County where I was born and spent my incautious youth running barefoot with other small boys wearing similar footwear and an overabundant assemblage of freckles. I was born on what I’m told was a rainy day, May 6th, 1870 in a farmhouse in the community … I wouldn’t exactly call it a village … of South Raub. For those of you unfamiliar with these whereabouts, South Raub is a crossroads on the Romney Road … I believe you refer to it as “US 231” now … just a few miles south of Lafayette.

All babies are said to be beautiful, but with any natural phenomenon there must be exceptions. I was born blessed with an oversized head and ears that could be most generously described as “aerodynamic”. And as the story goes, my uncle George McCutcheon attempting to cheer up my mother Clara after I was born, told her, “Don’t worry Clara. He’ll look alright after a while.” We’re still waiting for that to happen.

From that hilltop of our homestead I had a wonderous view of the entire world. To the west I could see the old Mintonye Church where my grandparents John McCutchen and his wife Kesiah Ritchie are buried. And, no, “McCutchen” is not a typo. It appears folks in the Midwest didn’t care much for details for how you spelled your name. Hence, there were any number of ways it might be spelled out given the nature or the predisposition of the recorder. My father, John Barr McCutchen, opted for the “en” but his more rebellious brother, my uncle George (for whom my brother George Barr McCutcheon was named) opted for the “eon”.

In a fit of youthful rebellion at the sagacious age of 12, I started spelling it with “eon” … causing nary a murmur or complaint and yet eventually leading the rest of the family into the 20th Century with “McCutcheon” as their name.

Beyond the woods surrounding our homestead to the north was Wea Creek. And of course, across the road was the landmark yellow barn … so well known to the locals and a directional beacon for the rest of the county. Now it’s important to note that the proper Hoosier vernacular for this esteemed landmark is “yaller” barn. Some around here may not understand you if you pronounce it using the proper King’s English. After all, they lost the war after 1776.

My youth was spent imaging far-off places and my head was filled with adventures. Boys being boys, we would romp through the woods, fields, and rafters of the yellow barn being chased by pirates, Civil War rebels, and other natives that we’d heard the adults talk about or read aloud from the exploits written, with editorial embellishment, from the local paper. One day while attempting to follow my bigger brother George, whose legs had the advantage of being 4 years longer than mine, across the rafters in the yellow barn, I failed to bridge the gap by a few inches. I fell and broke my nose thereby distracting from an already minus pulchritude ….. that is, my beauty, of which there was none. Nonetheless, broken noses, broken bones, cuts, scrapes and the like were all part of the excitement and adventure of fighting the hordes of imaginary wild beasts that roamed the Wea Plains.

My father, Captain Barr McCutchen (he always went by his middle name and the “Captain” was the common honorary by which he was addressed reflecting his rank and respect he earned from the community during the Civil War as captain of Company K of the 15th Indiana Volunteers), was a well respected drover for many years moving livestock hundreds of miles to market for the local farmers. But, alas, hard times befell us all throughout the 1870’s, and by 1876 my father had to give up driving livestock and took up a position at a new “school” that had opened on the west side of the Wabash River near the village of Chauncey.

Purdue was scarcely older than I, having been established one year to the day before my birthdate (May 6th, 1869). Its fame was neither far, nor wide … with buildings crudely new and no vines, trees, or shrubbery to soften the baldness of the structures rising out of a farm field. In 1876 when we moved into Purdue’s Ladies Hall where my father managed the commissariat …. a euphemistic way of saying he ran the place where the students ate, Purdue had less than 100 students enrolled, and a list of alumni that was more than zero, but less than 2. My best recollection of that year living at Purdue was the tremendous excitement when the first electric light was shown in front of the chemical laboratory. We moved out after a year and lived in a small house connected to the Tippecanoe County jail where my father had taken a job as the Deputy Sherriff. Although probably not the most refining influence for a boy of 7-9 years of age, I found many likable qualities among the various criminals and other malefactors who domiciled behind the sturdy walls and bars of the county calaboose.

Life moves on without bidding or encouragement, and I enrolled in a supplementary year at Purdue that was in addition to the regular four-year course of study. When I entered Purdue as a “prep” in September 1884 there were 300 students. The school consisted of a three story main building (University Hall, still there today), three story men’s dormitory, a chemical laboratory, an engine house, a wooden gymnasium, and the Ladies Hall where we ate and where I had lived for a year as a small boy. The classroom doors opened promptly at 8:00 AM each morning and the chapel bell punctuated our days calling us to class and chapel. In chapel Professor Craig would belt out the hymns while the bewhiskered President Smart looked at us over his spectacles with twinkling eyes.

I started out in Mechanical Engineering, but found it was a course full of the most malignant form of mathematics. I transferred to Industrial Arts that had practically no mathematics and was much happier. My childhood interest in drawing and sketching had a chance to root at Purdue and my drawings improved … or at least did not become any worse… and I found creative outlets for my cartoon ability. I was on the editorial Board of the first Purdue University Debris yearbook in 1889, contributing the majority of cartoons and illustrations throughout the book. Likewise, my drawings crept unbidden into The Purdue (the local newspaper) and I continued to contribute to both the university newspaper and the yearbook in the years after I graduated from Purdue and was employed by the Chicago Record newspaper.

One day I noticed down in the front of the lecture hall among the higher classmen a strangely clean cut, refined individual who stood out from his more rugged, corn-fed neighbors. This I came to learn was a mister George Ade. He attracted a good deal of attention on campus by wearing the only cutaway coat … a long-tailed affair. He wore his hair extra-long which on a country boy would look disheveled but on Mr. Ade it added to his debonair. George was someone who I admired and who simultaneously made me feel quite inferior … the country bumpkin next to the tall and refined city slicker. You’ll notice that George always possessed the more refined bowler style hat while I tended towards, and could only afford, the working man’s fedora. George and I were part of the founding fraternity brothers of the Sigma Chi fraternity – the first fraternity at Purdue University.

After graduation George and I shared a love for traveling the world. We both worked for Chicago newspapers for which he developed a national reputation for his columns about real people and real life. Newspaper life allowed us to visit distant lands and people in return for reporting back to the Midwest about life only imagined in the far reaches of the planet. George would do the writing and I would often contribute the illustrations since photography was expensive and newspapers had not quite developed a cost-effective manner by which to print photographs until the early 1900’s. The descriptions and tales of my adventures with the notorious Sultan of Sulu became the basis for one of George’s more popular plays, “The Sultan of Sulu.”

My travels extended to all corners of the globe often placing me in the center of history in the making. On February 15, 1898, news of the sinking of the Maine by suspected Spanish saboteurs in Havana harbor reached me while on board the cutter USS McCulloch at sea. When the McCulloh docked at Singapore we were ordered to join Commodore George Dewey’s flotilla to set sail for the Spanish vessel moorings in Manilla Bay, Philippines, in anticipation of the US Congress declaring war on Spain in April 25, 1889.

I and another correspondent were allowed to transfer to Dewey’s flagship, the USS Olympia when it positioned itself within firing range of the Spanish fleet in Manilla Bay. We two correspondents were the only civilian eye-witnesses to the famous order given by Dewey to the Captain of the USS Olympia, “You may fire when ready, Gridley”. Of course we were also on hand to hear Dewey’s less famous order after the 5th artillery barrage, “You may draw off for breakfast, Gridley.”

I sat with Pancho Villa in 1914 during the troubles with Mexico just prior to the Germans inviting Mexico to join them in a war against the United States. Pancho sat with a loaded pistol at the ready in case the dangerous American journalist posed any threat. I was behind the enemy lines in Belgium during WWII and traveled with the advancing Germany infantry to view the war close at hand. I even was one of the first correspondents to fly above the trench lines.

But even more nerve rattling than any of those adventures was Evelyn Shaw, who in 1917, I managed to find time from my traveling to marry. She was the love of my life, my confidant, my secretary, my organizer … and eventually the final author of my autobiography the year after my death.

In my long career I drew illustrations for many, many political and social events always striving to capture the irony of the situation. Some were whimsical – such as depicting the trial for Mrs. O’Leary’s cow on arson charges. Others detailed and captured the complex dynamics of politics and society. In 1932 the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism – Editorial Cartoon was awarded to a Hoosier illustrator from Tippecanoe County for his 1931 drawing, “The Economist”.

Another drawing, likely more widely recognized than the one for which I received the Pulitzer, was inspired by my imagination and youthful memories of Tippecanoe County and first appeared on the front page of the Chicago Tribune on September 30, 1907 … certainly it must have been a slow news day. It was reprinted by the Tribune in 1910 in response to readers’ requests. It then ran annually for 80 years from 1912 to 1992! [“Indian Summer”, left]

I was referred to by a fellow Sigma Chi named Milton Caniff … you may remember him from “Terry and the Pirates” or “Steve Canyon” comic strips … as “one of the all-time all-American cartoonists and the Dean of American Cartoonists”. My feeling is that to arrive at such a pinnacle only requires managing to survive the various hazards of peace and war long enough to outlast my aging contemporaries who have either died or found a better way to spend their time.

From my perspective, I led a full life and I’m content to be that “cartoon draw-er” from the banks of the Wabash, and a proud alumnus of Purdue Class of ’89.”