Don Wright 1934-2024

From Wikipedia.

Long time Miami News and Palm Beach Post editorial cartoonist Don Wright passed away at 90 in West Palm Beach, Florida on Sunday, March 24.

Don Conway Wright was born on January 23, 1934 in Los Angeles, California and was the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, having received one in 1966 and a second in 1980.

Working as a copyboy at the Miami News, from 1952 to 1956, Wright was drafted and served in the U.S. Army as a photographer, before returning to the paper as its graphics editor in 1958.

While at The Miami News, Wright frequently played pranks on other reporters who returned the favor.

Wright would toss his keys on his desk when he came in each evening. 

When he would leave his office for lunch or the restroom, his colleagues would slip an extra key on the keyring. 

After a while, the keyring grew so heavy that Wright swore and exclaimed, "What the hell! I don't even know what some of these keys are for!".

Wright continued to work for The Miami News until it ceased publication in 1988.

In 1989, Wright moved to The Palm Beach Post where he worked until his retirement in August 2008.

His cartoons have been published in at least two books: Wright On! A Collection of Political Cartoons (1971) and Wright Side Up (1981).

In 1966, he won his first Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, for a cartoon that captured the era’s Cold War anxieties. 

In it, two men in tattered rags cross paths between two enormous craters on what appears to be an old battlefield. 

One asks the other simply, “You mean you were bluffing?”

Walter Mondale looks for a running mate.

He won his second Pulitzer in 1980 for a cartoon skewering capital punishment.

That cartoon shows two Florida State prison guards carting a corpse from the electric chair. 

One guard asks “Why did the governor say we’re doing this?” 

His colleague fires back, “To make it clear that we value human life.”

In addition to the two prizes, he was also a finalist for the prize five times.

He won the National Cartoonist Society Editorial Cartoon Award for 1985.

He has won the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Distinguished Service in Journalism twice.

He has also won the Inter American Press Award three times, the Overseas Press Club Award five times, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Journalism Award twice, the National Headliner Award and the Best of Cox Award twice.

He is survived by his wife, Carolyn. 

Services are private and a memorial will be held at a later date.

UPDATE

"Don Wright, 1934-2024" In The Comics Journal.