Jeff MacNelly

Jeff MacNelly, 52, of Rappahannock County, Virginia, a syndicated Political Cartoonist and Creator of the comic strip, “Shoe,” passed away at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, on Thursday, June 8, 2000, following a battle with lymphoma that began late last year.

MacNelly graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, in 1965 and went on to attend the University of North Carolina. In 1969, during his senior year at UNC, MacNelly dropped out to pursue a $120-a-week job as a cartoonist for a weekly newspaper in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

He joined the Richmond News Leader in 1970, and in 1971, his syndicated editorial cartoons ran bi-weekly on the Perspective page of the Chicago Tribune.

After working 16 months at the Virginia-based publication, the 24-year-old MacNelly won his first Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. Two other Pulitzer Prize awards followed in 1978 and 1985.

In 1977, MacNelly started the comic strip “Shoe,” named in honor of his former boss and now University of North Carolina professor, Jim Shumaker. The political strip depicted a cigar-chomping newspaper editor, P. Martin Shoemaker, and two sidekicks – all of whom were birds. The strip, started in 1977, can be seen in more than 1,000 newspapers today.

After 12 years at the Richmond News Leader and five years after “Shoe” was introduced, MacNelly joined the Chicago Tribune where he continued the strip and illustrated popular humorist Dave Barry’s syndicated column.

More recently, MacNelly sold paintings depicting life in Key West, Florida, where he resided during winter months. And in 1993, MacNelly created the single panel cartoon “Pluggers,” portraying life on the slower side.

MacNelly was recognized among political cartoonists as the “best in the business,” in 1987, 1989 and 1993. In 1991 he won the Sigma Delta Chi National Award for editorial cartooning. The National Cartoonists Society also twice presented MacNelly with its highest decoration, the Reuben award.

After learning of his illness, MacNelly announced in January that he would be decreasing his output of editorial cartoons while undergoing outpatient treatment for the cancer, but he continued to illustrate “Shoe.”

A New York native, MacNelly is survived by his wife, Susan, and two sons, Danny, 13, and Matt, 25. Another son, Jeffery Jr., passed away as the result of a rock-climbing accident in Colorado in 1996.