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Jeffrey Kenneth MacNelly (September 17, 1947 – June 8, 2000) was a three time Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist, the creator of the popular comic strip, Shoe.

Early life

MacNelly was born in New York City in 1947 and grew up on Long Island. MacNelly’s mother was a retired journalist. His father C.L. MacNelly, ran an advertising firm, and was the publisher of the Saturday Evening Post from 1964 to 1968.

MacNelly was educated in his teens at Phillips Academy in Massachusetts. He graduated in 1965 and went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He joined the literary society St. Anthony Hall. He was accepted as a sports journalist and illustrator for “The Daily Tar Heel” and specialized in satire. He considered himself to be a horrible sports writer, but his illustrations for the paper were well beyond the ability of an average art student. Jeff quit school just shy of getting his bachelor's degree and married his first wife, Rita MacNelly in 1970.

Career

MacNelly got a job at the Chapel Hill Weekly. He worked for the editor who became his mentor, Jim “Shu” Shumaker. Shumaker’s impression on the cartoonist was so profound that he created the comic strip Shoe after “Shu” and the strip’s lead character is based upon him. By 1970, MacNelly had become such a fine artist, that he was hired by Ross Mackenzie at the Richmond, (Virginia) News Leader to be their main illustrator and satirist. In less than two years in 1972, MaNelly won his first Pulitzer Prize, helping to put the small paper on the map. MacNelly's first son Jake was born that same year.

At this time, MacNelly was courted by various newspaper syndicates and journals to work for them, but he turned them down, preferring the slower pace of southern culture. In 1974, his second son Danny was born and MacNelly was settling into being syndicated through the Chicago Tribune, while making the south his home. In 1977, he launched his first comic strip, Shoe, which was an immediate success. MacNelly won his second Pulitzer and a Reuben Award in 1978, and then a second Reuben in 1979.

In the 1980s, MacNelly moved to Chicago from Virginia and back again, he won the Thomas Nast Award and his third Pulitzer in 1985. His son Matt was born to his third wife in 1986. In 1989, MacNelly met his last wife, Susie MacNelly. They married in Washington D.C. in 1990 and soon thereafter, moved to Flint Hill, Virginia. They got a herd of horses, a garage filled with jalopies (including "Shoe's" Cosmo Fishhawk’s 1959 DeSoto), room enough for the multitude of stray dogs and cats they adopted, and a couple of studios where MacNelly could work. They also bought a bungalow in Key West, Florida where they could avoid Virginia winters.

In 1992, MacNelly met Chris Cassatt, a computer expert and cartoonist who became his assistant. Cassatt helped him change the way he worked by adding digitalization to his mediums. In 1992, MacNelly hired Cassatt full time, and they tele-commuted between Fishhawk pass, from Virginia to Cassatt's home in Aspen, Colorado. Also in 1993, on a suggestion from his wife Susie and long time friend Pulitzer Prize winning photographer, David Kennerly, MacNelly launched his strip “Pluggers.”

Tragedy hit MacNelly and his family when his son Jake was killed in a freak climbing accident in Colorado in 1996. Jake MacNelly was an aspiring editorial cartoonist and journalist for the Aspen News. The day he died, he had a cartoon published in the New York Times.

By this time, one of MacNelly’s friends and colleagues at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Gary Brookins had assisted MacNelly in filling in doing finish work. Brookins loved Pluggers and could replicate MacNelly’s style. Exhausted after his son’s death, MacNelly simply gave the strip to Brookins to take over in early 1997. “Pluggers” is still being produced by Brookins today and is syndicated in hundreds of papers world wide.

In the late 1990s, MacNelly began to also put more concentration into fine art painting and sculpture. By 1999, he had almost finished passing the task of creating Shoe onto Cassatt, Susie MacNelly and Brookins. But, in December 1999, MacNelly was diagnosed with Lymphoma. He kept on working in spite of his illness, producing “Shoe” and editorial cartoons and Dave Barry illustrations in his Johns Hopkins Hospital bed right up to the day he died, June 8, 2000.

MacNelly’s legacy is continued through the work of Chris Cassatt, Gary Brookins, Susie MacNelly, his head writer Bill Linden and Doug Gamble. This team keeps alive Jeff MacNelly’s work on Shoe and Dave Barry’s illustrations, as well as museum shows, fine art sales, licensing and publishing.

External links

• NCS Awards