North grad creates national exhibit

cartoons of clifford berryman

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By Mary Louise Spee | Tuesday, February 12, 2008 12:07 AM CST | () comments

The idea of peeking inside trash bags is pretty disgusting.

Fortunately, workers from an auction house chose to examine the moldy, mouse-nibbled contents of bags found inside a Washington, D.C., home in 1992. Sheathed inside was a treasure trove of nearly 2,400 cartoons penned by political cartoonist Clifford Berryman, who lived from 1869-1949.

“When his daughter died in 1992, she left garbage bags of these cartoons,” said Jessie Kratz, a 1995 graduate of Davenport North High School and now the curator of a national exhibit featuring the cartoons. “It was thought it would be nice to keep these as one collection.”

The collection is now housed with congressional historic records in the Center for Legislative Archives in the National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Part of the collection opened last week in an exhibit called “Running for Office: Candidates, Campaigns and the Cartoons of Clifford Berryman” at the Lawrence F. O’Brien Gallery in the National Archives Building.

Berryman’s penned image of President Theodore Roosevelt and a cuddly bear in 1902 led to the creation of the well-loved Teddy bear. Berryman was known for his gentlemanly approach in accurately depicting figures in his illustrations of the political scene and baseball. In 1891, he accepted a job as a cartoonist understudy for The Washington Post and later worked for The Washington Evening Star from 1907-49, Kratz said.

The “Running for Office: Candidates, Campaigns and the Cartoons of Clifford Berryman” exhibit opened Friday and runs through Aug. 17.

“I couldn’t be happier with the timing with the election coming up. Even though they were done 100 years ago, they’re still timely. Hopefully, we’ll be able to do more in the future,” Kratz said.

She is the daughter of Wayne and Sandy Kratz of Park View, Iowa, and Linda Kratz of Bettendorf, who went to Washington, D.C., for the exhibit’s opening

ceremony.

In his “Ain’t Politics Grand” cartoon from 1924, Berryman drew a taxpayer surrounded by a Democrat donkey, Republican elephant and Progressive Party goat, all promising to lower taxes.

Berryman’s pen also immortalized Iowa native Henry A. Wallace, a presidential hopeful on the 1948

Progressive Party ticket. He illustrated Wallace’s waffling on the issue of military preparedness as a deterrent to war in “Which of the two faces is right, Henry?”

Trying to organize the collection was a lengthy process that took a decade of work, Kratz said. Interns for the National Archives combed through old newspaper files on microfiche machines, trying to date the cartoons, and staff worked on the project whenever they could.

It was a perfect project for Kratz, who graduated from St. Ambrose University in 1998 with a double major in history and political science. She interned at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in 1996 and the Iowa House in 1998.

The National Archives hired her for a part-time position in 2000 while she was studying for a master’s degree in political science at George Washington University, Washington, D.C. “I’ve always wanted to work in government,” she said. “My second year, I was pretty well thrown in charge of the collection.”

In 2006, work began on the exhibit that includes a

52-page Web site with information arranged in a book-like format and history of Berryman’s life.

For now, Kratz is heavily involved in promoting and giving talks about the exhibit.

“It’s been fun working on a more artistic scale,” she said.

Kratz is “incredibly knowledgeable, energetic and brings a vitality to the agency. She doesn’t do anything halfway,” said Miriam Kleiman, spokeswoman for the National Archives. “It’s unusual to have someone so young who is so knowledgeable. It’s more than knowing her stuff. She cares and she is really passionate about the issues she works on.”