Print HOF

Ralph Graczak – 2013

Joseph Pulitzer Jr, came to to Post-Dispatch staff artist Ralph Graczak in1940 with an idea for a new comic strip.  Pulitzer thought everyone should have their name in the newspaper at least once, and a good way to do it was with a cartoon similar to Ripley’s Believe it or Not.  St. Louis Oddities was born, later to become Our Own Oddities, and became, along with its artist, one of the most widely read and beloved features in St. Louis journalism history.  Graczak received hundreds of letters a week, submitting the likes of gourds shaped like Richard Nixon to talking dogs, and he personally verified each of them.  The strip lasted until 1990. Graczak was a brilliant illustrator. His caricatures of celebrities often highlighted the Everyday section and TV book and were much admired by fellow artists, including then-colleague and Hall of Fame member Bill Mauldin  Another local neigborhood cigar-smoking young cartoonist was Hall of Fame member Amadee Wohlschlaeger, who convinced the young Gracak to quit the Katy Railroad and join the Post. Graczak retired from the Post in 1980.

Jim Fox – 2013

A newspaper career that spans 65 years is an accomplishment in itself, but Jim Fox did it by writing a column even after he retired from the Post-Dispatch. After a stroke destroyed his ability to type, he dictated the columns to his wife and daughter.

He began his work in St. Louis at the Star-Times, moving to the Post and, after retirement, the Suburban Journals. He often joked that his variety of jobs, including that of the Post’s readers’ advocate, “indicate they never knew what to do with me.”

While many journalists appreciated him for his advocate’s work, it was the folksiness of his columns that endeared Jim Fox to his legions of readers.

Eugene Field – 2013

Born in St. Louis, Eugene Field lived in an era in which newspaper reporters dreamed of becoming poets and fiction writers. He reversed that process for a while. Having written his first poem at age 9, he held jobs at several newspapers following college, including city editor of the St. Joseph, Mo., Gazette, before landing a high-profile position writing a humorous column for the Chicago Daily News.

Finding success there with his “Sharps and Flats” column, he began dabbling in poetry again, publishing over a dozen volumes. Many of those works were for children, including his most-famous work, “Wynken, Blynken and Nod.”

Sally Bixby Defty – 2013

She joined the Post-Dispatch staff in January 1965, but with no newspaper experience, she started out in the women’s section. After three years there, two as editor, she achieved her goal, becoming the first permanent female member of the city desk staff.

She was a proud general assignment reporter, relishing the variety in doing straight news, features and investigative reporting. For her work on arson-for insurance in St. Louis she received the first of several Pulitzer Prize nominations and was a finalist. She spent a summer in the paper’s Washington Bureau and covered several national political conventions.  She was named executive city editor but stepped down after a year, citing the demands on a divorced mother of three children. She worked several years on the copy desk, enabling her to spend her final three years on the Post-Dispatch going to night school at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, getting a master’s in English, specializing in teaching English as a second language. She took an incentive offer for early retirement in the fall of 1995.

Frank X. Bick – 2014

Frank X. Bick was a firm believer in providing neighborhood news to South St. Louis readers. The founder of the Southside Journal, he later merged his paper with the Neighborhood News. After his death, his son, Frank C. Bick, expanded even more into what became the Suburban Journals. The Journals included the Southside Journal and nine other weekly community newspapers that were delivered on every lawn from Spanish Lake to Jefferson County. The Suburban Journal chain was sold in 1984 to Ralph Ingersoll, who sold them to Pulitzer Inc. in 2000.

Tom Englehardt – 2014

From 1962 to 1997, Tom Engelhardt drew more than 8,000 editorial cartoons for readers of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His creative sketches were always drawn with thoughtful perspective, strong composition, and a wide variety of creative devices to convey a message in support of the Editorial Page. Throughout his career, he always espoused four criteria for good editorial cartoons: The truth, or one side of it; humor; moral purpose; and, good drawings.