Almost a Hoosier

Stan Lee (1922-2018)

Half the world was at war in 1941 when nineteen-year-old Stan Lee assumed the position of editor at Timely Comics. Within a few months, the United States was involved as well, and Stan had enlisted in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. His basic training came at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. In short order he was transferred to the Signal Corps' Training Film Division in Astoria, Queens, and found out that he had been classified as a playwright. "I also learned that there were only eight other men in the U.S. Army with that particular military occupational specialty (MOS) classification besides me," Stan writes in his autobiography. They included moviemaker Frank Capra, author William Saroyan, and cartoonist Charles Addams. During his tour of duty, Stan wrote scripts for army training films. He also continued penning stories for Timely Comics.

After a stop at Duke University, Stan Lee was transferred once again to Fort Benjamin Harrison, located northeast of Indianapolis. He would serve out the rest of his tour in the Hoosier State, advancing to the rank of sergeant, writing training materials, and even authoring the lyrics to a marching song for the Army Finance Department, sung to the music of "The Air Force Song." Fiscal Freddy, a cartoon character used to train fiscal officers, was one of Lee's creations. So was the poster design and slogan for a prophylaxis campaign: "VD? Not Me!"

"I was mustered out of the army in Indianapolis," Stan remembers. "Five minutes after receiving my discharge papers, I was in my convertible heading for New York." Thus ended his career as an army sergeant and a Hoosier. He married in 1947, wrote romance, western, horror, and other stories during the 1950s, and finally--with comic book artists Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and others--revolutionized comics during the 1960s. Stan Lee is still going strong today.

Update (December 6, 2019): And as we all know, Stan Lee died on November 12, 2018, in Los Angeles after a very long and illustrious career. He was ninety-five years old.

Excelsior! The Amazing Life of Stan Lee by Stan Lee and George Mair (2002), in which Stan remembers his time served in Indiana with the U.S. Army. The cover art is by John Romita, the mainstay on The Amazing Spider-Man after the departure of Steve Ditko.

Text and captions copyright 2011, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Almost a Hoosier

James Thurber (1894-1961)

In his book, The Thurber Album (1952), author, essayist, humorist, and cartoonist James Thurber recounted the lives of his family, friends, teachers, and colleagues in a series of essays brimming with "nostalgia about the good old days in the Middle West," as the jacket reads. Although Thurber was born in Ohio, his father was a Hoosier. In a chapter called "Gentleman from Indiana," Thurber recalled his father's life:

Charles L. Thurber [James Thurber wrote]. . . was born in Indiana, a state known principally today, I suppose, as the birthplace of Cole Porter and the late Wendell Wilkie. To my father, looking fondly westward from Columbus, Ohio, where he spent most of his life, it was the romantic land of the moonlit Wabash, the new-mown hay and the sycamores, the house of the thousand candles, and the Lockerbie Street of James Whitcomb Riley. [Boldface added.]

Charles Thurber grew up in Indianapolis and was acquainted with Riley, "The Hoosier Poet," who lived on Lockerbie Street. "He is our Hoosier Burns," Thurber wrote to a friend.

Charles Thurber went to work early to support his widowed mother. As a young man, he was appointed to the staff of Indiana's governor and worked with Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Ohio-born and later a judge and the first Commissioner of Baseball. That started Thurber's career in politics. After marrying a Columbus girl named Mary Agnes Fisher, Thurber left Indianapolis for Columbus in 1892, which was, by coincidence, the four-hundredth anniversary of the first voyage of the city's namesake. The couple's son, James Grover Thurber, was born on December 8, 1894, in Columbus, where he grew up and attended Ohio State University. James Thurber became a reporter on the Columbus Dispatch and later worked on the staff of The New Yorker, making his fame as a minimalist cartoonist and the creator of Walter Mitty and other characters remembered from his youth. And that's how James Thurber missed being a Hoosier by one generation.

(Incidentally, Thurber also wrote an essay about his friend, Billy Ireland, in The Thurber Album. Ireland, another Ohioan, cartooned for the Columbus Dispatch for almost forty years and was the creator of "The Passing Show," a brilliant Sunday page published between 1908 and 1935. The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at Ohio State University is named in his honor. A large part of the library's holdings are from collection amassed by Hoosier Bill Blackbeard.)

James Thurber's book, The Thurber Album (1952), in which he recounted stories and people from his youth.

Hoosier Charles L. Thurber, James Thurber's father.

Text and captions copyright 2011, 2024 Terence E. Hanley