‘Cathy’ comic strip focused on ‘4 guilt groups’

When legendary cartoonist Lynn Johnston, creator of the popular “For Better or For Worse” comic strip was interviewed several years ago by Tom Heintjes of Hogan’s Alley, a magazine of the cartoon arts, he asked: “Whose work do you currently enjoy?” 

Johnston was quick to zero in on Cathy Guisewite, creator of “Cathy.” Johnston replied: “I admire Cathy Guisewite’s writing ability. I read the work very closely for her innovative punchline ability. She has a skill for writing that not many other people have.” 

Johnston and Guisewite are the only two women cartoonists who have been awarded “Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year” by members of the National Cartoonists Society. 

Words always came easily to Cathy Lee Guisewite. Born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1950, she grew up in Midland, Mich. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 1972 with a major in English literature.

“I grew up with Betty Crocker as my model,” Guisewite said. “And then there was Betty Friedan with ‘The Feminine Mystique,’ which opened up this universe!” 

She said she ate an entire Betty C’s triple-fudge layer cake while trying to digest Betty F’s women’s liberation manifesto. 

After college, Guisewite became a talented advertising copywriter and was promoted to agency vice president in 1976. However, she “hated her thighs” and had an empty personal life by age 26. 

Although art was not a strong suit for her, Guisewite, a southpaw sketcher, started doodling cartoon images of herself, as a form of therapy for her anxiety. 

Her mother, Ann Guisewite, thought the sketches had the makings of a comic strip. She did some research and sent her daughter a list of comic strip syndicates and an ultimatum: “You submit your drawings or I will.” 

“Just to get my mom off my back, I sent a package of my drawings” to Universal Press Syndicate, Guisewite said. She was signed immediately; her first strip appeared in late 1976. 

“I love writing about the small things in life that cripple us,” Guisewite once told a reporter. “Like 500,000 brands of cereals.” 

Humor, according to Guisewite is “an important emotional equalizer that bonds people, especially women, together. The ability to have a sense of humor about the little things is what gives everyone the strength to take on the big things,” she said.

 “Cathy” ran in America’s newspapers for 34 years. It focused on the life and times of Cathy Andrews, a career woman facing the issues and challenges of food, work, love and having a mother – the “four basic guilt groups.” 

Referring to her generation of women, Guisewite said: “Some of us marched in the street, others of us marched to the refrigerator. We survived decades of subtle and not so subtle pressures to be all things to everyone.” 

“We fought with boyfriends, bosses, mothers, bank accounts and will power. We tip-toed on the fine line between soaring confidence and secret self-doubt. We gave in, gave up, regrouped, rallied and started all over a zillion times. We wept on the floors of the swimwear dressing rooms….”

 

“I loved doing the comic strip, but there was only so much I could say in those four little boxes,” Guisewite said. “My voice was never going to change the world,” she commented. “My voice helped women get through their next five minutes, and I’m fine with that.” 

“Cathy” was required reading for men as well, in their ongoing search to gain clues about the female psyche.

Female artists gain acclaim as comic strip creators

Cartooning was once a male-dominated profession, but two women who crashed the party with their comic strip ingenuity are Lynn Johnston and Cathy Guisewite. 

They are rock stars within their industry. Each has been selected as the Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year by members of the National Cartoonists Society. 

Johnston won in 1985 for her popular comic strip “For Better or For Worse,” which ran in newspapers from 1979-2008. Cathy Guisewite won the award in 1992. She is the creator of the “Cathy” comic strip that was published from 1976-2010. 

Lynn Ridgway Johnston is slightly older, born in 1947 in Collingwood, Ontario, Canada. This is her story. 

She got her first real job in 1968 as a “medical illustrator” at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. “I animated a whole kidney biopsy,” Johnston once bragged. One of the physicians asked her to draw cartoons to illustrate his lectures. 

“The other doctors were infuriated, though,” Johnston said. “They thought it was making fun of their profession, but the students who looked at these cartoons memorized the information 100% quicker than the students who didn’t!” 

When she was pregnant with her first child, her obstetrician asked her for some cartoons to post on the ceiling above his examining tables. 

That led to a book, featuring 80 cartoons, titled “David! We’re Pregnant!” Two more books followed, which attracted the eye of editors at Universal Press Syndicate. They inked Johnston to a deal to produce a four-frame comic strip, beginning in 1979, and then gave her a 20-year contract extension. 

Naming it “For Better or For Worse,” Johnston said was “a good choice, as the strip is not all roses.”

 A signature element of “For Better or For Worse” was that the characters aged in real time. Lead characters Elly and John Patterson matured, their three children grew up, and Farley, the Old English Sheepdog, died. But he went out as a hero, having saved 4-year-old April from drowning in a stream. Thereafter, Farley’s puppy, Edgar, assumed the role of “family dog.”

The Pattersons lived in a Toronto suburb, so Johnston had fun injecting “Canadianisms” from time to time. 

Elly’s breakfasts occasionally included “shreddies” (cereal made of malted, shredded wheat in the shape of little squares) or “beaver tails” (a wheat yeasted pastry that has been stretched to the size of a beaver’s tail and is float cooked in 100% soya oil and then topped with butter and a choice of topping, the most popular being cinnamon sugar). 

Johnston earned her “maple leaf” star on “Canada’s Walk of Fame” in Toronto in 2003, a civic project that now honors 173 Canadian individuals and groups who have made their nation proud.

Celebrating Toronto stardom

Johnston was a dear friend of the late Charles Schulz, creator of the incomparable “Peanuts” comic strip. She said that their connection was “sort of a spiritual bond.” 

For Johnston, comic strip art was the easy part. Writing was harder. Yet, “every day it’s a joy,” she said. 

“There are some days when my work is so covered with ‘white-out’ that I don’t want anyone to see it. And there are days when I can…feel pretty smug.”

 

“There are also days when I feel like I’m going to quit and go work at Woolco. Or it’s gone – I’ve used it all up!” 

No way. America needs more Lynn Johnston “Canadianisms,” such as “bargoons” and “bangers” – bargains and sausages.

President Nixon’s connection to Duke ‘is what it is’

Friends and law school roommates Lyman Brownfield and Richard Nixon ranked second and third, respectively, in the Class of 1937 at the Duke University Law in Durham, N.C. After graduation, Brownfield settled in Columbus, Ohio, and joined a law practice there. 

Nixon returned to his hometown of Whittier, Calif., and took a job with the law firm Wingert and Bewley. In 1939, the firm was renamed Wingert Bewley & Nixon. Nixon remained a partner of that law firm until 1952, when he was elected vice president of the United States.

 

Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon

Throughout his political career, Nixon stayed in touch with Brownfield, and they remained loyal pals. 

In 1970, Brownfield revealed: “Dick (Nixon) had to grow on you. He was intelligent, sincere…but not a backslapper.” 

“There wasn’t much to do but study at Duke,” Brownfield said. “We didn’t have money, so dates were few and far between.” 

“Ordinarily, Dick was a quiet fellow…but every now and again, we’d get a few beers in him and get him up on a table to make a political speech,” Brownfield said. “He had a great one on Social Security. It was all done in whimsy, of course.” 

Brownfield had a car – a nine-passenger 1926 Packard sedan. The law school students nicknamed the vehicle “corpus juris,” which “means body of law.” 

“Meals were supplied by a widow who ran a boarding house in town. It cost 25 cents for all you could eat,” Brownfield recalled. “Anyone who brought six or more people to dinner got his free, so I’d always pile as many people as I could into the car.” 

Nixon’s entry into politics came in 1946. Living in California, he ran as a Republican for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. He upset a five-term incumbent, Democrat Jerry Voorhis. Nixon was unopposed in 1948. 

Opportunity knocked in 1950, and Nixon ran for the U.S. Senate, facing off against Congress member Helen Gahagan Douglas. He won the race, but she was the first to give Nixon the label “Tricky Dick.” 

Nixon was still a relatively unknown commodity when the Republicans put him on the national ticket in 1952, as the “youthful running mate” of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Nixon showed an interest in learning how to fish, and Eisenhower gave him private lessons.

 

The Eisenhower-Nixon team won a landslide victory over Democrat Adlai Stevenson of Illinois and John Sparkman of Alabama. 

For the 1956 election, Republicans remained united with Eisenhower-Nixon as its dynamic duo. Stevenson was nominated for president once again by the Democrats, but Estes Kefauver of Tennessee became Stevenson’s running mate. 

When the votes were counted in 1956, Eisenhower and Nixon won re-election convincingly. 

But the political horizon was changing. At the Democrats’ 1956 convention, other names mentioned for vice president included: John F. Kennedy, Al Gore Sr., Hubert Humphrey, Luther Hodges and Lyndon B. Johnson. 

This set the stage for the historic election of 1960. Who would succeed Eisenhower in the White House? 

The Republicans picked Nixon as their presidential candidate in 1960, and his campaign came to Greensboro, N.C., on Aug. 17, 1960. (He was accompanied by his “personal advisor” Lyman Brownfield.) 

Nixon’s had promised to physically visit and speak to people in all 50 states. He told supporters in Greensboro: 

“The main personal reason why I wanted to come back to North Carolina as the first of the states in this part of the country is because I owe my education to North Carolina and to Duke University. If the university had not been so generous with its scholarships, I could not have come here.” 

“I have many memories of Duke,” Nixon said. “I remember that I worked harder and learned more in those three years than in any three years of my life. And I always remember that whatever I have done in the past, or may do in the future, Duke University is responsible one way or the other.”

Who knew? President Nixon studied law at Duke

Only one U.S. president earned a graduate degree from an institution of higher learning in North Carolina. He was Richard Milhous Nixon, who in 1937, was awarded a law degree from Duke University in Durham. 

Richard Nixon became America’s 37th president. 

He is perhaps Duke’s most famous alumnus who didn’t play on the Blue Devils’ basketball team. 

At least that’s the opinion of Sean Braswell, senior writer at the Ozy media company…and an attorney. 

Richard Nixon was born in 1913 as the second son of hardworking Quakers Frank and Hannah Nixon. They lived in Yorba Linda, Calif., and operated a lemon grove. 

Soon thereafter, the family moved to Whittier, Calif., where Frank Nixon opened a grocery store and gas station. 

As a young man, Richard learned to play five instruments – piano, saxophone, clarinet, accordion and violin. In high school, he was a champion debater, graduating third in his high school class in 1930. 

Richard was offered a scholarship from Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. He declined, however, because he was needed to help run the family business. His elder brother, Harold, was dying from tuberculosis. 

Hence, Richard Nixon stayed home and attended Whittier College, graduating in 1934, majoring in history. He was attracted to Duke Law School, which was seeking “to build its reputation as an Ivy League-caliber school in North Carolina,” Braswell wrote.

At Duke, Richard Nixon’s work ethic stood out. Braswell said: “One classmate called him ‘the hardest-working man I ever met.’” 

He awoke before dawn, studied, went to classes, worked at the law school library and studied some more when he was off duty. 

Richard Nixon’s home-away-from home at Duke was described by Braswell as “an abandoned tool shed not far from campus. It was an 8-by-12-foot room with a bed, table and chair with no stove” – no heat, lights or running water. 

It definitely was a hard-knocks life for law school students during the Great Depression years. Lyman Brownfield lived through it. He and Richard Nixon became good friends as Duke classmates. Brownfield hailed from Uniontown, Pa., a coal-mining community. 

Nixon and Brownfield, along with two other law school students, decided to “combine resources” during their third and final year at Duke, all rooming together, living “in the back of an old farmhouse, tucked into the Durham woods, about a mile from campus.”

Brownfield went on to practice law in Columbus, Ohio. He was interviewed by Jay R. Smith in 1970 for an article in the Ohio State University student newspaper. 

“It was a flimsy frame house,” Brownfield recalled, “like a barracks with tar paper. We had electricity, but no plumbing, running water or central heat. Rent was $50 a month.” 

They called the place “Whippoorwill Manor.” 

Brownfield said: “When it was cold, the only sources of heat was a lightbulb dangling by a cord from the ceiling and an old laundry stove.” 

“At night we’d buy a newspaper, ball it up and throw it in the stove. Next morning, we’d strike a match to the paper, and the stove, which was thin sheet metal, was red-hot in two minutes. It stayed hot just long enough so we could get dressed.” 

“We kept our shaving equipment behind library books at school, and we showered at the gym,” Brownfield recalled.

 

This is Nixon's official graduation portrait. He and Brownfield graduated from Duke Law School in 1937…and jobs were tight.

‘Shiver my timbers’ – Pirate-mania grips Beaufort, N.C.

One of the greatest pirate stories of all time – “Treasure Island” – was transformed into a live-action, full-color film in 1950, more than 70 years ago now. The movie was released by Walt Disney Productions. (It was the studio’s first venture outside its specialty area of animation.) 

The film was based on the book written by the Robert Lewis Stevenson of Edinburgh, Scotland. To promote the movie, Disney’s publicist hyped “musket-roaring action” and the “skullduggery of the wily, one-legged pirate Long John Silver.” 

Trina S. Rhodes of North Aurora, Ill., a professional pirate reenactor, storyteller, author and consultant to the entertainment industry on “pirate heritage and culture,” said that “Treasure Island” is the “most famous pirate story every written, and the most famous pirate in it, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is Long John Silver.” 

Many agree that actor Robert Guy Newton’s performance as Long John Silver, who hobbled on a single crutch with his parrot Capt. Flint perched on his shoulder, is a cinema classic.

 

Kat Eschner of Smithsonian.com said Newton created “the way that many film and TV pirates would speak (with a distinctive accent). 

Michael Almereyda of The New York Times wrote that Newton had a huge screen presence, and “as Long John Silver, he seemed convincingly possessed of a lifetime’s worth of rum-soaked, roguish scheming.” 

Robert Newton was born in 1905, in Shaftesbury, Dorset, England, a place that was the origin of many real pirates. He became a stage actor at age 16. 

During World War II, Newton served with the Royal Navy (while in his mid-30s), aboard a minesweeper that provided escort service for several Russian convoys. 

In the post-war era, Newton moved on to motion pictures. After “Treasure Island,” Newton was cast in the starring role in the 1952 release of “Blackbeard the Pirate,” which movie critic Sam Moffitt described as a “real pirate movie.”

 

“Here in ‘Blackbeard the Pirate,’ we get Newton at full strength, walking on both legs with his bizarre mannerisms at full throttle,” Moffitt said. “There is a phrase used to describe over-the-top acting – ‘chewing the scenery.’ Newton not only chewed up the scenery; he digested it….” 

Newton did not invent the pirate word “arrrr” (also pronounced as “yarrrr” and “arrrrg”), but he did perfect it, according to The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis (Ind.). The expression was used by pirates when responding in the affirmative or when expressing excitement. 

The North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort, N.C., is a good source for more information about Newton and other “Golden Pirates of the Silver Screen.” Newton’s acting career was cut short by chronic alcoholism, which led to his death from a heart attack in Beverly Hills, Calif., in 1956 at age 50. 

Newton has been memorialized as the “patron saint” by The Pirate Guys, LLC, of Albany, Ore., who created “Talk Like a Pirate Day.” When in character, Mark Summers goes by “Cap’n Slappy,” and his pal John Baur is known as “Ol’ Chumbucket.” 

They came up with their whimsical idea in 1995 and selected Sept. 19 for the annual observance. Now, “Talk Like a Pirate Day” is celebrated internationally, thanks to residual publicity generated by an endorsement from syndicated columnist Dave Berry in 2002. 

Get in touch with The Pirate Guys through (Mrs. Chumbucket) Tori Baur, a.k.a. “Mad Sally,” at talklikeapirate.com.

Here's a file photo from the Beaufort Pirate Invasion archives:

 

Alice Ramsey’s cross-country trip was an ‘automotive marvel’

Dubbed the “First Lady of Automotive Travel,” Alice Huyler Ramsey of Hackensack, N.J., was 22 years old when she made history in 1909 as the first woman to drive a motor car across the United States. 

The adventure was sponsored by the Maxwell-Briscoe Company, one of the leading automakers at the time. 

Writing for Smithsonian magazine, Marina Koestler Ruben said the journey began from New York City on June 9, 1909, with Ramsey turning the crank on the “dark-green, four-cylinder, 30-horsepower 1909 Maxwell DA, a touring car with two bench seats and a removable Pantasote roof.”

To accompany her on the trip, Ramsey took along “Nettie Powell and Margaret Atwood, her sisters-in-law, both in their 40s, and Hermine Jahns, an enthusiastic 16-year-old friend,” Ruben said. “Ramsey and her three passengers had to learn the basics of car safety, wear hats and goggles, and cover their long dresses with dusters to protect themselves from dirt and grime.” 

Their trek to San Francisco took 59 days to complete and covered 3,800 miles, with only 152 of those miles taking place on paved roads. On one stretch of highway at Cleveland, Ohio, Ramsey set her personal best – attaining top speed of 42 miles per hour.

 

“Though the Maxwell-Briscoe Company would publish an ad upon arrival stating that the group traveled ‘without a particle of car trouble,’ this was far from reality,” Ruben said. 

“For navigation, Ramsey relied on the Automobile Blue Book series of travel guides, which gave directions using landmarks,” Ruben said. “But sometimes the route changed faster than the books. The women struggled to find a ‘yellow house and barn’ at which they were supposed to turn left; a horse-loyal farmer had deliberately foiled drivers by repainting in green.” 

There were no books for regions west of the Mississippi River. Ramsey followed “the telegraph poles with the greatest number of wires.” 

Rainy weather in Iowa posed particular challenges with potholed, muddy roads that were nearly impassable. “It was slow-moving and, in one case, no-moving: the women slept beside an overflowed creek until the water receded enough that they could ford it,” Ruben wrote. 

“They persevered through the region, taking 13 days to conquer 360 miles (and relying on horses for towing at times!).” 

In all, the female “pit crew” had to replace 11 tires, repair two broken axles and a broken brake pedal as well as clean spark plugs all along the way to keep the Maxwell running. Newspapers hailed the Maxwell for its dependability and durability.

 

One male journalist couldn’t resist, stating “Ramsey showed the world that a Maxwell could take anyone (even a woman driver) all the way across America.” 

After their brief bout with fame, the four women returned to New Jersey by train, Ruben noted. Ramsey continued to make cross-country drives, “losing count after her 30th.” 

In 1961, Ramsey published “Veil, Duster and Tire Iron,” telling the story of the famous cross-country trip in her own words. Their entrance into San Francisco was “scheduled” by the Maxwell marketers to occur on Aug. 7, 1909, requiring Ramsey’s team to lay over on the evening of Aug. 6 in Hayward, Calif., about 30 miles shy of their destination. Here, they were served “a perilous snack of hot tamales and cheese omelets!” 

Alice Huyler Ramsey died in 1983, at age 96. She was the first woman inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 2000. Only five other females were enshrined during the next 20 years. 

‘Automotive women’ are hall of fame worthy

Only six women have been inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame since it was established in 1939. This compares to nearly 300 men who have been enshrined. 

The organization in Dearborn, Mich., exists to honor “individuals who have significantly benefited the automotive industry and the world of mobility.” Women are under-represented but celebrate the selection in 2020 of Helene Rother (1908-99). Here is her story.

Helene Rother was born in Leipzig, Germany. She became a designer of high-fashion jewelry in Paris, France. During World War II, she fled Europe with a young daughter. They eventually arrived safely in New York City in August 1941. Rother took a job as an illustrator at Marvel Comics. 

Rother became the first woman to work as an automotive designer when she joined the interior styling staff of General Motors in Detroit in 1943. 

She specialized in upholstery colors and fabrics, lighting, door hardware and seat construction for the Buick, Chevrolet, Cadillac, Oldsmobile and Pontiac divisions. 

In 1947, Rother established her own design studio in Detroit. Her first major client was Nash Motors of Kenosha, Wis. She styled the interiors of most Nash cars from 1948 to 1956. Even the economical Nash Rambler models were prominently promoted as “irresistible glamour” on wheels.

 

Rother designed the Rambler’s interiors to appeal to the feminine eye – elegant, luxurious and stylish – with expensive fabrics and coordinated colors and trim. Rambler was widely acknowledged to be the first successful modern American compact car. 

Many Nash sales brochures and Rambler advertisements of the time featured copy stating: “Styling by Pinin Farina of Turin, Italy, and interiors by Madame Helene Rother of Paris.” 

Customers saw the European influence in Nash’s automobile styling in its Airflyte and Ambassador models as well. 

After Nash and Hudson Motors combined in 1954 to form American Motors, Rother devoted herself to other clients such as Elgin American, which crafted women’s jewelry, timepieces and other accessories. 

In addition, she created “Skylark” sterling-silver flatware, a pattern that silversmiths Samuel Kirk and Son, of Baltimore, kept in production more than three decades. 

Another of Rother’s clients was Miller-Meteor, the Ohio coachbuilder that produced hearses and ambulances on Cadillac commercial chassis.

According to automotive historian Patrick Foster, “Rother is one of the important people in the automotive industry – an early pioneer and one of the best.” 

The very first woman inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 2000 was Alice Huyler Ramsey (1886-1983). She and three women passengers made history in 1909 when they took a nonstop, 3,800-mile road trip in Ramsey’s new automobile – a Maxwell touring car – from New York City to San Francisco. It was a remarkable 59-day journey.

Two of the women in the “group of six” who are members of the hall of fame are motorsports pioneers – Shirley Muldowney and Janet Guthrie. Both women are now in their 80s. 

Muldowney is the first great female dragster. She emerged on the scene in 1973 and went on to win three National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) World Championships.”

 

“NHRA fought me every inch of the way, but when they saw how a girl could fill the stands, they saw I was good for the sport,” Muldowney said. 

In 1977, Janet Guthrie became the first woman to qualify and compete in both the Indianapolis 500 and the Daytona 500 races.

 

Coming soon: Hall of Famers Denise McCluggage and Bertha Benz.

N.C. legislative considers honoring a pair of ‘coastal critters’

North Carolina’s House of Representatives now has two “coastal critter” bills under consideration. Both are worthy and have merit, as these bills pay tribute to the bottlenose dolphin and the loggerhead sea turtle. 

House Bill 2 would adopt the bottlenose dolphin as the official North Carolina “state marine mammal,” and House Bill 281 would give the loggerhead status as North Carolina’s “state saltwater reptile.” 

H.B. 2 was introduced Jan. 28, by Rep. Bobby Hanig (R-Powells Point), a Currituck County businessman. He quickly collected 17 bi-partisan co-sponsors for his bill. 

The proposed legislation cleared the House Committee on State Government on March 10 and was referred to the Committee on Marine Resources and Aqua Culture. Hanig chairs that committee. 

A favorable vote would send H.B. 2 along the winding road to the House Committee on Rules, Calendar and Operations, chaired by Destin Hall (R-Lenoir). 

Hanig’s bill notes that “bottlenose dolphins are abundant along North Carolina’s coastline” and their mouths give “the appearance that they are always smiling.” Hence, they are ideal ambassadors for North Carolina tourism.

The Dive the World website reports that dolphins “have been declared the world’s second most intelligent creatures after humans, and the dolphins’ playful, inquisitive nature have made them popular with divers. People often feel during an encounter that the dolphin is studying them as much as being the object studied. “Dolphins tend to look into your eyes.” 

H.B. 281 – to show love for the loggerheads – was filed on March 11, with four primary sponsors. Hanig is one; he is joined by Republicans Pat McElraft of Emerald Isle, Frank Iler of Shallotte and Phil Shepard of Jacksonville. 

One of the nine co-sponsors is Deb Butler (D-Wilmington). She said: “I am supportive of this measure because I believe it draws attention to the fragility of the species.”

Jean Beasley of the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue & Rehabilitation Center in Surf City said: “Giving the loggerhead a position of honor can raise awareness about threats to the species. In protecting sea turtles, we also make the world a better place for all creatures and ourselves.” 

A third legislative bill to honor a “coastal flyer” is reported to be “in the works.” It would declare the osprey to be the “official state raptor.”

Ospreys are diurnal birds of prey that hunt during daylight hours when they use their keen eyesight to focus on locating fish just below the surface of the water. Their menu includes about 80 different species of saltwater and freshwater fish. 

Ospreys are fun to watch, as they plunge into water feet first, swooping down at a speed of 30 miles per hour or greater to grasp fish with their specially equipped talons.

 

It’s said that the “osprey’s favorite habitat is right here in Carteret County.” 

McElraft and Iler had championed the osprey bill in 2020, which sailed through the House, passing 111-0, with nine members not voting. The bill went over to the Senate on March 28, 2020, referred to the Committee on Rules and Operations of the Senate. 

Political observers said the osprey bill was a victim of the COVID-19 shutdown of legislative business. 

Sen. Bill Rabon (R-Southport) is Rules and Operations committee chair. He is a veterinarian and an avid hunter and fisherman. 

Surely, “ospreyites” can lean on Rabon to help achieve a legislative trifecta – dolphin, loggerhead and osprey – all as North Carolina “state critters.” Yep-yep-yep. 

Was Gen. Burnside a trendsetter in men’s grooming?

Historians generally agree that Union Gen. Ambrose Everett Burnside’s performance as a Civil War military leader had its ups and downs. 

He won some early on, chiefly in North Carolina – marching from Roanoke Island to occupy Elizabeth City, South Mills, New Bern, Newport, Morehead City, Beaufort and Fort Macon. But later in his career, Burnside lost some crucial battles in Virginia. 

Gen. Burnside’s unusual display of facial hair, however, was quite trendy and a bit of a fashion statement in its day. So much so that the “Burnside look” is described in today’s world as “iconic.”

Gen. Burnside’s whiskery growth was originally dubbed “burnsides,” which evolved into “sideburns.” Thick strips of facial hair grew down his cheeks and connected to a full mustache. This contrasted with a clean-shaven chin and neck. 

His head was balding, which added to the Burnside persona. 

Charles Bruce Catton, a Pulitzer Prize winning U.S. author, once remarked that Burnside “had probably the most artistic and awe-inspiring set of whiskers of all…in a bewhiskered army.”

Seconding Catton’s motion is journalist Shaunacy Ferro, who said Gen. Burnside’s “do wrapped around his face like a cat’s tail.” 

Writing for The Washington Post, Christopher Ingraham commented: “There are only two types of men who actually look good in beards” – Union and Confederate Civil War generals. 

The journal of the National Institute of Science once playfully determined that more than 90 percent of all Civil War commanding officers had some kind of facial hair, but “the beardiest” wore the Yankee-blue. 

Ambrose Burnside, who lived from 1824-81, has become a folk hero. He won the popular vote of the American public in a 2019 just-for-fun “playoff” organized by the staff at President Lincoln’s Cottage at the Soldiers’ Home in Washington, D.C., which is now a popular tourist site. 

They dubbed it as “Cottage Madness.” Online voters filled out their “Civil War facial hair brackets.” There were 16 contenders, and Gen. Burnside was seeded Number One. 

Burnside coasted through the first three rounds, and faced off with underdog Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (the Number 11 seed) in the championship match. 

“Beard bracketologist” Johnny Di Lascio said: “Grant was the Cinderella of the tournament. He was once clean-shaven, but his wife had a dream in which her Ulysses appeared with a beautiful beard. Five months later, Grant wrote to a friend, ‘you would never recognize me…I have a beard more than four inches long and it is red.’” 

Burnside smoked Grant in the championship round. It was a landslide, as Burnside garnered 72.5 percent of the vote. 

Among the Confederate generals, Di Lascio preferred the facial hair of Jubal Early whose scruffy, salt-and-pepper beard was a remarkable specimen. 

“It seems those long nights raiding Maryland towns didn’t leave a lot of time for shaving,” Di Lascio said. “In the summer of 1864, Early launched an assault on Fort Stevens in Washington that brought him within a mile of Lincoln’s cottage.” 

“When Lincoln came to visit the fort the next day, Early’s forces were still attacking, exposing Lincoln to enemy fire. Early’s army never made it to Lincoln’s Cottage,” Di Lascio said, “which is happy news for those of us who work here today!” 

Early lamented in 1864: “We didn’t take Washington, but we scared hell out of Abe Lincoln.” 

Just for the record: Confederate Gen. Albert Jenkins grew the longest beard among all Civil War commanding officers. Eventually, his beard grew so long that he needed to tuck his beard into his belt before engaging in battle.

But saving the best for last…here is the official portrait of Ambrose Burnside, as Governor of Rhode Island (1866-69):