The Okefenokee Heritage Center has a new permanent exhibit honoring American cartoonist Walt Kelly, the creator of the “Pogo” comic strip that’s set in the Okefenokee Swamp.
A ribbon-cutting to dedicate the exhibit honoring Kelly’s work will be Saturday, October 3 during the OHC Heritage Marketplace.
Kelly’s strip was syndicated to newspapers around the country and ran for 26 years, becoming one of the most popular comic strips in America.
The cartoonist was not from Waycross, but visited for the first and only time in 1955, when he spoke to the Waycross-Ware County
see POGO, Page 4 Chamber of Commerce.
During that visit, Kelly saw the swamp that became the setting of his iconic, politically satirical strip with Pogo’s famous quote, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
Kelly was born in 1913 in Philadelphia, but grew up in Bridgeport, Conn. After graduating from high school there in 1930, he worked a variety of jobs before being hired as a crime reporter for the Bridgeport Post.
It was early in his journalism career that he began cartooning, and illustrated a biography for well-known Bridgeport native, P.T. Barnum.
A relationship with Helen DeLacy, whom he married in 1937, took him to California where he added animation to his cartooning when he was hired at Walt Disney Productions. While there, Kelly contributed to the animation of Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Dumbo.
Kelly died at the age of 60 in Los Angeles.
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