Smokey Stover
Digital
04/08/2006
SMOKEY STOVER
A little vector graphic dedicated to Bill Holman, the cartoonist who drew the comic strip ''Smokey Stover,'' Bill Holman was born on March 22 1903 in Crawfordsville, Indiana and died Feb. 27, 1987 in New York. He was 84 years old.
Mr. Holman's strip about a daffy firefighter and his equally zany chief, Cash U. Nutt, who drove to fires in their two-wheel fire truck known as the Foo Mobile, was syndicated to some 50 newspapers by the Chicago Tribune-New York News syndicate. The strip ran for more than 40 years beginning in 1935 until finally it was discontinued in 1973 when Bill Holman retired and wanted the strip to end with him.
The Smokey Stover strip is almost certainly responsible for the term ‘Foo Fighter’, which was adopted by many radar-operators pilots, and airmen throughout the second World War as a term of identification and labeling for many of the UFO’s (Unidentified Flying Objects) which were often sighted and reported while conducting air operations and combat missions in the skies over Europe.
Origin of Holman's 'Foo'.
Mr. Holman placed the word ''foo,'' which he said had a humorous sound for him, in many of his strips. Apparently according to Mr. Holman’s nephew, Victor P. Alsobrook his uncle found this word engraved on the bottom of a jade statue in San Francisco’s China Town. The word ‘Foo’ apparently means Good-luck.
For further information on Bill Homan and ‘Smokey Stover’, checkout the superb Smokey Stover Website.
Thanks and appreciation to Victor P. Alsobrook, nephew of Bill Homan.