Conversation w/ Comicstorian Ron Gagliardi on Museum of Creative Cartoonists and Illustrators in CT

to do? I don't know, you're telling me.

So we're going to record, so you may have to press something that says, uh, okay.

I did press that.

So Ron, I'm just going to interview you so I can use this content for ongoing marketing. So we'll have the conversation this way, there's no question. I can, you know, go back, I'll put it into a transcript and then, and transcribe it. I'll send you a copy of it. In this way when we move on and we start, I have content for social media, the press release, and all of that. So Ron, can you give me a little bit of history of yourself? Uh, let's go way back. I want to know about little Ron, actually. So little Ron, who's 10 years old, where were you? Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Hamden, Connecticut, went to Church Street School, and my major philosophy and being was formed in 4th grade. When I had a 4th grade teacher who tried to destroy me. And she would bring me up in front of the— oh yeah, she'd bring me up in front of the class very often and she'd say, "Class, this is Ronald. He doesn't know how to follow directions. He doesn't do right things," and all that stuff. And I'd go home crying every afternoon trying to get rid of the pain that I had from this teacher. So about halfway through the year, I decided that I was not going to let this nasty person destroy me. So I formed what I call the shell. And on my shell, or with my shell, nothing could bother me. Nothing could get through. You can't insult me. You can't harm me physically. Well, you can harm me physically, but mentally you can't harm me. And so it eventually warped into something that was called no negativity in or out. And I was explaining this to a class I was teaching at Cheshire High a couple of 20 years ago or so. And I said, wait a minute, there's two negatives in there, no and negative. How can you have that in something that's supposed to be positive? So I immediately changed it to only positivity in and out. And you probably saw this on my emails on the front and back or top and bottom of my emails. And it's my life philosophy. And I thank this fourth grade teacher for all she did for me. And it makes me the happiest person I know. Yeah. So it's basically impossible to get me angry. To get me perturbed, to argue with me. I don't argue with anyone. I, anything that's positive, it's me. I'm always out for fun. I always try to make people laugh. That's another one of my goals every day, to make people I encounter, whether it's on the phone or in person, to laugh. Wow.

So you took this bully teacher that bullied you, was bullying you, and who knows what was going on in her mind. Uh, but somehow she must have felt a little bigger and stronger and whatever her— but you, and you created a Ninja Turtle shell. I love that.

I did. And there's a strange ending to this story. Uh, some years later, uh, I was at a place in Wallingford called Ashlar Village where retired people live, and I was videotaping a commercial for them, and I saw this lady go down the hall by me, uh, with the woman who was guiding me around. She was in a wheelchair and she turned into a room that had something Kramer on it. And I said to the person with me, did that person used to teach? And she said, yes, she used to teach in Hamden. I said, oh my goodness, that was my 4th grade teacher. I have to say hello. So I ended up talking to her and I invited her to my school in Wallingford. I taught at an elementary school and I had just found my art folder from 4th grade, her class and the other art, and the art teacher's class. And I had a display at my school. I said, would you like to come to see my display? And she said, oh, I think that would be fantastic. So we set it up for a week or two hence, and I called 3 newspapers because I like attention, and they were there at my school to cover this great event with my 4th grade teacher coming to see the artwork and say hi to my students. So when I went up to Ashlar Village to pick her up that morning, while I'm sitting waiting, an alarm went off. And I said to the secretary that, please tell me that's not Mrs. Kramer's room. And she said, oh no, there's probably nothing. So a little while later they came back and said, Ron, Mrs. Kramer died during the night. And, uh, I, I get goose pimples just talking about it. And I thought, oh geez, I hope she wasn't nervous about coming to the school and that caused her to die from, you know, heart attack or something. So I had to go back to the school and now it was a different story. Of how this guy missed getting his teacher to come to say hi and to reunite at his school. And I called a friend of mine up who also had her as a teacher, and well, he was in the same class. It was a 5th and 4th grade class, and he said, "Congratulations, you killed her!" So I didn't— I don't hope I didn't kill her, but I didn't certainly mean to because I don't hold grudges. That's another part of Opieyo.

Oh, you know, I have interviewed over 200 people. We'll have to do this again, a live on my show that I have. And I have interviewed over 200 people, and that— this is the first time I'm— I, I'm speechless too. That's right, the story. So, and I love the story because she molded you. Do you, do you have this happen a lot to you, Ron, where you're like, you found your fourth grade artwork and then all of a sudden there you see the teacher? Like, do you have a lot of coinkydinks in your life that seem to kind of all come together?

I do. Usually my life and my wife work out exactly how I hope that they will. And I've got ESP in some ways, mind reading and predicting the future and stuff. And so my life kind of is all together. It's really nice. I have a very nice life and a very nice wife.

I love that. And let me ask this question. I never ask this question. So do you feel like you have angels around you? Do you feel like you kind of have with your positive shell that you have, that you may have something— angels, good karma, something?

Not angels. I've never considered it that way. Uh, I don't know. I guess there's a karma thing. If you exude positivity, usually positivity comes back to you.

Wow. I, I had no idea when I asked that question that I would get a response like this, and now it kind of does make sense and forms why you're so likable and, and the emails going back and forth, and I absolutely love that. All right, so that is some story. All right, and then, so were you at the same age, were you the kid that opened up the, the paper and, and read the comics, the, or cartoon strips? What was that like for you growing up?

I liked cartooning. I, I have always been a cartoonist, but even now I'm a cartoonist. I'm not the greatest cartoonist, but that's one of the things I do. Yeah, so I was always as a child after that, probably even mostly before that, but I was a pretty happy-go-lucky guy. I was bullied on occasion, and I even figured out a way to creatively stop the bullying using art, as a matter of fact. And I think it was in 5th grade, there were some 6th graders who were bullying me, and I knew that we called them hoods at the time. And so I knew that they liked tattoos. And so I had a set of colored pens They were— look, they looked like cigarettes, and the filter type was the color of the ink. So I went to the head hood and I said, you know, I really don't enjoy getting beat up by you guys. How about if I trade you? I know you'd all like to have tattoos, but you're too young to go get them, and I'm a pretty good artist. I can draw you knives with snakes around them and skulls and all that stuff in return for you guys not hurting my hands, because, you know, that's what I need to draw with. And they agreed, so I stopped my bullying with a creative solution.

Oh my gosh, why do you say that you're not a great cartoonist? Is that because someone said to you, Ron, you're good but you're not great, or is this all coming from your own mind?

No, I work with a few professional cartoonists and illustrators, one of whom won a silver medal at the Cannes Film Festival when he was 16 and has done books and animations and full-length animated movies and stuff. And when I look at what they do and what I do, I'm back in fourth grade.

But what, what do they say? Have you ever asked them?

No, it's just obvious to everyone that I, I'm not the caliber that the other folks are.

That's interesting. All right, so now, so there's, so there's a caliber. So let's talk about that. So, so first of all, you, you've always loved it, maybe whether you have the talent or not, I have no idea, but it's, it's still, I mean, that makes sense. I love music, but I really can't sing, but I still really enjoy music. So similar. And so is this where your passion rose to really understanding now the history of the cartoonists and what they, you know, what their value that they were bringing to that time frame? Can you give me a little more information about, about your why? I want to hear your passion.

Well, I've always, I've always felt that cartoonists are undervalued. They're the people who call attention to things that need to have attention called to these things in a humorous way. And it's kind of like having a medicine pill with candy over it. And so it sugarcoats what they want to say, but in many cases they say it in a way that's acceptable. So that— I've always loved the cartoonists and I always wanted to promote them. And that's part of why I'm doing the museum and part of why I collect cartoonist work.

I love that. So, so growing up, so I was born in 1962, and when I could start to read, I— they were the, the only part of the paper that was colorful. And I always wondered, and I still don't actually know the answer, so how— like, why did they make the other part of the paper colorful if they had the ink? Or was it that they just wanted to really highlight the funny pages? What do they call them? What was it called at the time?

Comics. Comic strips. Funny pages.

Were they always colorful?

No, I've been— as part of my decisions with the museum, I'm a historian as well. I've done books for Arcadia Publishing on Cheshire and Naugatuck, so I'm— and I was the town historian for Cheshire for 9 years, so I like the history of things. So I've been collecting cartoon pages back to the 1900s, 1925, 1945, so I'm able to compare what they were like. And back then, nobody was doing color. It was all black and white. And so for a period, there were lots of color, but everything else was black and white. Now some newspapers have full color here and there, and they have it in their ads, but they now— there's mostly color on Sundays, often black and white on weekdays.

Oh, so Sunday comics, that's what it was that I loved. And Back when the Sunday comics first came, were they political in nature? Because I know now there's a lot of satire political cartoonists that, you know, are out there. But what was it like in the beginning? And what was the philosophy of even having, you know, throwing this in a newspaper that had information that adults would read? What was the history of the why that they would throw that in there?

It was mostly family, rather, back then. And just humor. There were a couple like Dick Tracy that was crime-based, but nowadays it's like I've been analyzing these things really, really strictly recently because when I start the museum, I'm hoping that people will recognize that this is a person who's also serious about comics and that I can possibly make some suggestions to editors who are in charge of the comics pages. So I did one analysis of the back page of the New Haven Register, which I get every day since like, I don't know, 1970, and there were 22 comics, either strips or one panel, and of those, 12 of those were negative. And when I say negative, there's one mostly devoted to war. It's a comic, but it's war. There was one that mentioned porn, which kind of surprised me. It's no longer something that I think parents would want their kids to be reading and something that may not attract the kids, but even for adults, you shouldn't have that much negativity in that short of a time. So I'm hoping to encourage some positivity. One of the ways I found that I can do that is when I was a kid and I bought comics, there was a little white stamp in the right-hand corner or left-hand top corner of the comic. And it was said, we subscribe to the Comics Code of 1954 or something like that. So I actually— I Googled the Comic Code of 1954, and there's a huge amount of information about what these people agreed to go by. And so I want there to be a comic strip or comic pages code of 19— of 2022, and I want that to be almost exactly what it was in 1954. So I'm going to promote that to newspapers.

I love that idea. So were there— did they have like, uh, photos of like the family and the father reading the sports page and the mother reading the ads? And I don't know, someone would be reading the business section and the little kid doing the coloring. Or remember the Play-Doh that you could— or the— what was it called where you could put down the—

uh, that was Silly Putty.

Silly Putty. Oh my gosh, I actually met with the creator of that one time. Oh, that is so cool. I always wondered, did this— what, what, like the Silly Putty, at what point did he know that you could actually pull up the comic strip ink and have it look so cool?

Well, it was, it was kind of a mistake. I think they were trying to develop a packing material and it was just kind of gooing on everybody, and I guess they must have found if they placed it on something with colorful ink they could pull a print from it. But that they, they, they did well. It's still out there.

So interesting. I, I am so glad that you have a relationship with Jerry and my dad and that this is something I love it, you know, the whole historian, and I love this whole idea of cartooning because as you start, as I'm sure I'm not the only one, as you start thinking about it, you're like, that is such a big piece of our childhood. Now, are papers doing them now? Because I mean, everything's digital now, so how is that working?

And what's happening? Up here, the papers that I either buy or subscribe to, they also have an online version. I haven't really visited the online version, so I haven't seen what they have there. I'm assuming they still have comics there, but I don't know for sure.

All right, I want to come back to the comics, but I want to go a little bit into your history again. So you are— so where did you go to college, or did you?

I went to— well, I did go to college. I always wanted to stay at home for college, so Southern Connecticut State College was right nearby in New Haven. Wasn't that expensive. My parents weren't able to pay for my college education, so I had to work 3 jobs to go there and pay for myself to be there. And I started out as a language major. I had French, Italian, Latin, and Spanish in high school. Actually, Spanish started in college. And around the middle of my sophomore— my freshman year, I guess, of college, having the Spanish course, I realized I didn't know what the heck I was talking about. I was not going to be a great language teacher. So I looked around in the catalog for something that I could do, and then I, I couldn't do math at all, so it had to be something that didn't have math. And the only program that didn't have any art was art. And fortunately, I was always pretty good at art, as you remember from my days with the hoods and the tattoos. But I thought, let me try this. So the middle of my sophomore year, never having had an art course, I became an art major, and I was competing against kids who had had art all the way through and a year and a half at college. And so I wasn't doing so well, but I also liked butterflies and moths, and I was an expert at those. So that's what most of my art was— butterflies and moths. People kind of looked at me askance and said, are you gonna ever draw anything besides butterflies and moths? So I had to do some stuff, and I managed to graduate, and I managed to become an art teacher.

Okay, so I want to hear about being an art teacher, but could you just tell me what your mom and dad, who they are and what, what did they do for a living?

Uh, let's see, my father was a person who had been in World War II on a battleship. He was a, uh, a person who was very good with his hands. He was a carpenter, but he never really got full-time jobs at that. He became a, what they call a mail handler. We have to make sure that's M-A-I-L. And he used to work at the main, main branch in New Haven on Brewery Street. And he fortunately was strong, but his job was to unload the trucks all day with all the heavy mail bags and put them on the conveyor belts. But he also did part-time work building bars and helping people to help their houses get built and things. My mom was a high school graduate, did not go to college. My father didn't go to college either. And she became a clerk at a drug, or druggist company, helping to sell the over-the-counter drugs. And she also worked in a bank at night when they— all the figures had to be added up or something. And then she worked at McDonald's for a while, didn't enjoy that that well. And she worked as a pool attendant at Hamden High School.

Wow, they sound really lovely, great parents.

They were fun people. Yeah.

Oh, oh wow, I just— thank you for sharing that with me. I just love that. All right, so now, so after you get out of college You become— what happens? You become an art teacher? What was the first job?

Yes, I wanted to teach inner city because I felt with my personality I usually got kids to laugh a lot, and I wasn't— I didn't feel that I was a racist or anything, and I thought that even if the kids kind of gave me some tests, I could probably survive them and make them laugh at the same time. So I got a job teaching inner city art at a middle school in New Haven. Then I ended up in Wallingford, Connecticut, teaching elementary art at all the elementary schools eventually. In my 27 years there, I taught at all of them. And being an art teacher is like never having to work at all. And especially, I had 6 classes a day that couldn't run away from my humor because I always wanted to be a stand-up comedian, and this was my opportunity. I made the kids laugh. I would dress up funny sometimes. They would come to my class knowing not only they were going to have some fun doing art, but they were going to get a smile or a giggle with Mr. Gag.

So, oh my God, Mr. Gag, I love it. Yeah, I look a little sad and I feel a little sad because I don't understand why art has been taken out of the schools. And I'm not 100% sure what's happening anywhere else, but I can tell you there's really no art anymore in Florida. And so what, like, so is art still in the school? Do the kids still go math, science, art? And what grade do they go up to in the Connecticut school system? Are they getting art?

They're getting it from K to 12. I'm not sure if in the senior high school level if the art courses are— everybody has to take art. But they're quite prominent in Wallingford and New Haven and Hamden in this area. Yeah, they like art.

It's so important. It's really hard to see. I actually serve on a nonprofit Art House, and, and they help to kind of, you know, bridge that gap between some schools not having art and, and having art so that the kids have an opportunity. Because you really can't tell for a child if they have any art talent unless really they are in art class. I mean, parents can, you know, give them crayons and different things to color, but as a teacher, did you, did you see some students and you're like, oh, they've got they've got the talent?

Yep, there were a few. It's something that's kind of ingrained, I think. Something with how you see and how you're able to translate what you see into what your hands— has something to do with fine hand coordination. It's hard to explain what the artists who are really going to be great artists can do, but the part of the ability to draw, that helps. That starts you off. I was always good at drawing. And after that, you know, I was able to pick things up through college that I needed, painting and things.

I love that. We have a beautiful artist, I follow him, Patrick Anino. Patrick goes, travels all around the United States. He's from Connecticut. He travels all around the United States and he paints murals, which to me would be— I don't even know how you paint a mural, you're so close, and then it's— that's like real— that's difficult, right? That's got to be.

Well, depending on how you do it. I have a friend in Cheshire named Tony Falcone. Who's a professional muralist and portraitist. And the one that he did that most people would know was on the house race, the car, yeah, what is it? The band gambling. It was the, I don't know, they had betting, horse racing in this main building. And so he was hired to do a mural on the side of this building. So what he did is he drew on a piece of large paper what he thought the mural should look like with the horses and the jockeys and stuff. Then he'd make squares, little tiny squares through that drawing, and then he projected those onto the wall. Not with a projector, but by hand. He would look at one thing and, oh yeah, I make that 1 foot instead of 1 inch. And then he put up scaffolding and he just painted the side of the building.

Amazing. I want to hear, Ron, how you met my parents.

Hmm. I'm not sure if I remember how I met your parents. I know I went to the museum and probably went through there, but I'm not sure that Herb hired me when the, the person who was in charge had broken her leg and he needed someone who was going to be available for 6 months or 7 months while she recuperated. And so I, I said, well, I'll be happy to do that, but I think I need a title to go along with it. So I was the assistant director of the Barker Character Comic and Cartoon Museum, and that stayed for about 9 years. Wow. So I, I guess Herb and Gloria recognized that I had some creative ideas and thoughts. Uh, one of the ones that I went to them with was, you know, Herb, I've been seeing this thing called websites, and do you have a website? And he didn't know what a website was, and so he said, no, we don't have a website. And I said, well, I would recommend you checking into that because I think that's the way to go for businesses. And he did, and he ended up hiring 2 or 3 artists, and they have a fantastic website. So I guess he liked my idea.

I love that story. My parents, you know, they really— they believed in social media before many people did, and they also— they also were on social media. Dad had a Twitter account, he had a LinkedIn account, he had his Facebook account. He loved going on, he loved— you know, I would read the reviews and he'd say, okay, here, respond to this for with the reviews. So even when I was with him at 89, 90, he was all over it. He really loved it. They were— yeah, they were advanced. He also understood, uh, he just understood like spiders and that, you know, that there were people out there that were collectors and how do you find them, and there was a way, but we never really could capture that. So now, so then at what point did you— were you— when you were a height— when you were a teacher, did you also bring in your love for cartoonists? When did you start studying the history and the background of cartooning?

I guess it started at Southern. I mean, I was looking into colleges and I was looking into people who had been to college who were cartoonists and who hadn't been to college and cartoonists and finding out about them. It turns out that that just attracted me. Now again, I wasn't that great a cartoonist, but I was able to invent a type of cartooning that I'm really good at. And I call them Numlets, and it stands for numbers and letters. I make cartoon characters out of numbers and letters, and I teach it to kids as young as 3. As long as they know their letters, I can teach them to draw cartoons. I could have called them Letnums, but that didn't sound as good as Numlets. So I've been teaching cartooning since probably, I don't know, 1980. Maybe before that, I forget. I've taught in some summer programs for like 15, 20 years every summer, and I knew how to— go ahead.

No, you go. I want to hear— I finish it.

I knew how to, you know, show the kids how to make the 4 panels and how to do the word balloons, and that they were able to make some pretty credible cartoons.

What, what comes first, the words, the like the storyline, the plot, or the cartooning? I, I don't even know how that works.

Well, for me, it's easier for me to have the idea and then do the cartoon. So what about other cartoonists? I don't— I'm not sure. The ones that I've been analyzing, some of them do a play on words. So they find a play on words that they can do, and then they draw the cartoon with it. I've been working with one of my former students for, let's see now, he's 40-something, probably about 20, 25 years. He had been my student up until 5th grade and he enjoyed working with me, and then he went to middle school and high school, was in a car crash that was almost fatal to him in high school, and when he came out of the coma and was starting to rehabilitate, he remembered Mr. G, he was always friendly, and maybe he could help me become a cartoonist. So he had taken a course or two at Pear Art School, which is a local school up here that was really great. But he wanted a little more specific information and to work with someone. So he called me up one day out of the blue and he said, can I, can I help you? I mean, can you help me? Can I work with you? So I used to meet with him like once a week, once every two weeks for years and years, and we would create cartoons together. And I'd give him a concept and he'd create the cartoon.

And then what would happen to the cartoon?

Well, we're working on a set of books right now with many of the cartoons that we produced together. And we're hoping to, when we get them done, to submit them to one publisher. He's going to be in the Cartoon Museum, and we held off trying to get them to a publisher until he appeared in the Cartoon Museum because we both felt that it would be to our advantage to have that on his resume. He's been an inductee into the Museum of Creative Cartoonists and Illustrators.

I love it. So, so it's better to have him not go the self-publishing route and just— and, or is that like, if he can't find a publisher, would he just self-publish it?

We may self-publish. We could go with Amazon. A friend of mine recently did a 400-page autobiography with Amazon and a couple other books. So they're, they're another opportunity. I also was the editor of Cheshire Magazine for a year until it folded because we didn't have enough advertising. So we can publish in the direction of our own magazine if we want to. If we can come up with enough money, but that would be another route we could go to.

I love it. What is, um, so when you look at cartoonists, so take this, are you able to give us his name?

Oh yeah, sure, his name is John DeAndrea.

So for John DeAndrea, so what is, um, what do you call it, what, what is his art like, the theme of it? I know I'm not using the right word.

Um, I guess it's kind of like mostly just people put into situations based on what I tell him with the joke or the gag is going to be. The gag, yeah, hard to be serious with a name like Gag. So it depends on what we need. I mean, he can do backgrounds and stuff, but he's best with characters. He does some really interesting characters, facial expressions and things.

Wow. And has he also sold it or has done anything else with it?

He has done lots of sketches for the police in Wallingford. And he's been doing pet portraits recently, but he also does his version of like what Elvis Presley's singing was like, or any of the famous rock and roll singers. And he can do a very good— not a caricature, these are actually portraits, but he can do some pretty good caricatures too. He's pretty versatile.

I can't wait to see his art. So when you say you analyze, can you go and explain a little bit more that— what you— what do you mean analyze?

Well, I'll give you an example. I was listening on the radio and somebody was talking about general dentistry. So I thought I would show a dentist with an empty chair with a general with a uniform about to sit down in the chair, and that's general dentistry. Not particularly exciting and fantastically funny, but it's something that's a play on words. And I'm a punster, so I often do pun-type things. And I can even explain to you how punstering works. And I never heard anyone able to do this. See, I've been punning since I was a little kid. And people have noticed that, Ron, you know, we say a word or a sentence and all of a sudden you have a pun like 2 seconds after that. How do you do that? And I was never really sure. So I sat down to analyze it one day and I found out that when I hear words, my brain is automatically analyzing them from 3 points of view. I'm looking for synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms. So synonyms mean the same, antonyms mean the opposite, and homonyms mean a word that sounds exactly like the word in the sentence. Okay, so once I find one or two words that could have one of those things applied to it, I then make the pun. And that's the simple way of showing how puns are made.

Wow, I love that. Ron, you are really the coolest. And by the way, you know what, I'm just going to take a second to say that this is a fantastic interview and I'm going to send you a copy of it. I want to post it. We don't even have to do another one. You are fantastic. All right, so now I want to understand. So first of all, I, of course, I have to ask you some of your favorites. I know you love them all, but so favorite Nat Living?

Thomas Nast, N-A-S-T. And Nast does not— nasty does not come from Nast. You would think. And he was pretty nasty with some of his cartoons. He was a realistic cartoonist and he also could do cartoons that looked like the people he was making fun of. And I can tell you that he was in the, like, the 1860s to late 1800s, and he was like the most powerful person in the country at his height, meaning that when he put a cartoon of his in the Harper's Weekly, which was the front page all the time, or not, not only, but always, almost always all the time, His cartoons could be very satirical. They could be political. There was a very corrupt administration that's always talked about with Thomas Nast. The administration was in New York City, was called Tammany Hall, and Boss Tweed was the head of Tammany Hall. And so Nast decided to take him on and bring him down. And his cartoons were so biting that Boss Tweed wanted to pay Nast to not do any more. So he offered a bribe to Nast to stop doing the cartoons. And I think at the time the bribe he offered was equal to maybe $250,000 to $500,000. So Nast, sensing some fun here, accepted. And so then he found— he decided, well, since he's offering that much, maybe he'll offer me more if I want more. I think he did. But Nast refused it and continued to work on him and brought down Tammany Hall.

Wow, so a lot of influence.

Oh yeah, he had to make— well, for example, President Lincoln and President Grant said that his cartoons in favor of their campaigns helped them to become president.

Wow, that's so interesting. Now a lot of people aren't familiar with Dr. Seuss. Can you explain a little bit about Dr. Seuss? Because he was able to Didn't he write to help protect on, um, whatever the mosquito thing, whatever that was?

Malaria? Yes. I'm not sure about that. I know that he used his skills in some ads during the war, World War II, so some of his cartoons were in that. I'm not so sure. I guess the simplicity of his cartoons was something that attracted people, and the fact with the rhyming, people enjoyed that, kids enjoyed that. Beyond that, I don't know too much about him. I know his name, I think his last name was Geisel, his real name, not really Dr. Seuss.

Right, right, right.

So successful.

Yes, yes. I remember at one point we had a traveling Dr. Seuss and Thomas Geisel, I think his name, and they had showed with the malaria and how he put that together. But anyway, so that could be an interesting one also to have at the museum. I want to talk about the museum, but I have to ask you, of course, now. All right, so who is your favorite current cartoonist?

My favorite current cartoonist, huh. I'm not sure if I have one.

Um, when you see a new one, who do you say? When you see one that you're like, oh, he just did a new one, I can't wait to read it.

I like how Gary Trudeau works. I'm not sure I like all of his plot lines, but I like the way he illustrates people and does things with the background, and sometimes there's silhouettes. So I like the different methods that he uses, although I know that he's doing less and less work now, and I believe he has other people doing the inking, so I'm not sure how much control he has now. I do remember I called him up once. He lived on Olive Street in New Haven, and somehow I got his number. I must have been probably 25 or 30 at the time. And I called up and I said, I'm wondering if you accept ideas from other people or if you do your ideas and your sketches as well. He said, no, I do it all myself. So that was my— the end of my relationship with Gary Trudeau.

Wow, you're funny. Right, so this is like such a— I know this is a dumb question. I feel like it's a dumb question. Is there a difference between the cartoonist and a comic book artist?

Huh, um, it depends. Some cartoonists have just a cartoony style. Comic book artists, the ones with the superheroes and stuff, they have a very realistic style with lots of different shading and emphasis on musculature and things. So they're both cartoonists, but one is more of an illustrator than the cartoonist. However, there are illustrators like Tommy DePaola who also draws, or used to draw because he died now, in a cartoony style. So there's a lot of overlap and it's hard for me to distinguish. And I can't tell you, well, that's just only a cartoonist and not an illustrator, or that illustrator couldn't possibly be a cartoonist. It's hard to tell.

I cannot get this. Okay, so honestly, this all piques the interest, and if I'm interested, I think everyone else would be interested. So I love that you're bringing this to the attention. But before we go to the museum, Dad loved the comic strips too, and then he had— I want to hear a little bit about Mort's story, and, and he— I'm not— Mort, Mort, Mort, right? Who had the, who had the museum but that it just didn't make it? I think he—

oh, Mort Walker was— Mort Walker, he invented Beetle Bailey, and Beetle Bailey is still going, but Mort Walker has died, and I think his son, I think his name is Gary or Greg, is carrying on the, the Beetle Bailey strip. But he— let's see, there was a cartoon museum in Poughkeepsie that folded, and he bought the contents, I think, and the rights, and he transported it down to Florida, which I'm not sure— I'm pretty sure that's what happened because he lived in Connecticut. I don't know why it would have gone to Florida, but it went to Florida, and then it folded down there. And I think he was starting something up here with it, but that either didn't eventuate or didn't succeed.

My dad told me this story. I love it. My dad— I remember my dad telling me the story that he said, Adrian, I was in the museum and I was sitting at the front with Mort as people were coming in, and he— I said, Mort— this is my dad talking— Mort, you charge way too much money to get in. It should be like a, you know, not a, not a very high price. And Mort said, no, I want to make it this price, or whatever it was. And my dad said, Tamora, you really need to bring that price down, like something that was more affordable. You know, like we have a $5 these days. I'm sure probably was like $2 or $3. And my dad was like, you're not going to make it if you, if you keep the prices so high. So my dad always thought that maybe it was the prices, but that's something to consider. You know, that's why we keep our museum price, you know, very, very fair. And this summer, free children through the, through the program that the state had. So I think that makes a lot of sense. Now we're having a museum. So you're, you are So I want to hear this, so because this was— this is like a dream of yours, or you haven't— have you had it before? Share with all of us because I am going to put this on after you look at it. Tell me, because I'm like, I want to hear the whole—

here's how it was supposed to originate. A friend of mine's mother somehow came into possession of an unknown, um, an unknown about but, uh, still famous by Thomas Nast. So he was famous she got this cartoon of his that no one had ever published. No one ever knew about it. Wow. So when she had died, it was in the— her will or in her closet or both. And so he became the owner of this unknown unpublished Thomas Nast cartoon. So we contacted the Thomas Nast Society, which used to be located in Morristown, New Jersey, where Nast was living. He came here from Boston— I mean, from Germany and lived there. And they told us— we sent a photocopy of it they said, yes, you guys are so lucky. This is an unknown unpublished cartoon by Thomas Nast, and there are Thomas Nast collectors all over the world, they said, and this will be very interesting. So we wanted to debut it at the Barker Museum, and we wanted to start the cartoon museum of, of our type of cartoon at the Barker Museum. So we were talking about this with your dad and maybe Jerry too when I was, when I was working there, but it never eventuated. So recently, I guess it was October of 2020, um, might have been '21, but I— who cares. My friend and I— I have a friend named Rich Mason who's like the worldwide expert on Gumby. He's watched all 250+ shows. He knows where the hand was left in by mistake and that kind of stuff. So we wanted to put a Walk of Fame to start at the Barker Museum, and we found a company that printed adhesive stars like on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood. And so we went to Jerry and asked him if he would like to start this Walk of Fame at the Barker Museum in the Gumby area at the museum. And he said, yeah, let's do that. So we had, uh, we, he had the printing done on the stars and we went there to do the, uh, the dedication and the newspapers came. New Haven Register had a nice color photo and stuff. And while I was there, I didn't even bring it up, Jerry said, you know, I think I'd like to give you a little space up here on the second floor in the museum for your stuff. I said, oh, that'll be great. So when I contacted him a week or so later, he said, you know, we gave it a little more thought. And I thought, uh-oh, it's not going to happen. Something's going to stop it from happening. And he said, no, we want to give you a room at our art gallery at Foxwoods. And I said, whoa, I'm going to be able to have a museum with a Foxwoods address? That's amazing. So that's, that's how I got to be with this museum in, in the art gallery at Foxwoods.

I'm so glad that Jerry was thinking that way because it's such a brilliant idea. Anytime we can educate, well, all ages, right? There's not an age to it, and really bring up the arts, and it ties so well into the, the gallery that we have there, but also just the education piece of it is so important to me, and I love that you're behind this and it's all of your education and history. That, that is so brilliant. So I'm so excited. So can you share now what, what your vision is of how it's going to look? Because I know you've already been kind of putting things together. So what should people expect?

All right, so when I found out that I was going to have the room, uh, and then I found out that they called it the cubby, I thought, this is not going to be a major space for the museum. So Jerry had done a video and, and brought me down to the cubby and it's 3 walls, and maybe it's about, I don't know, 8 feet by 10 feet total. And it's not normally what you would call a museum, but the fact that I called it a museum, it became one. So it really doesn't make any difference. And so originally I was going to have the left wall and the right wall, and the back wall was going to be Barker Art Gallery things because they liked featuring things back there. And I thought, well, that's a little disappointing, but But even to have two walls at Foxwoods at Tanger Outlets, that's a big deal. So I was, I was going along with that. And then Jerry called one day and said, you know, we decided to give you the back wall. So I thought, oh boy, I'm going to have three walls. So that, that's great. So I started planning and how I would do this. And I did. At first I was going to start framing my collection, but that was going to be really expensive. And then I figured out, well, I'm going to figure out a way that it won't be expensive to have, but it will look fairly nice when I display them. And I don't know how many people are— what— who are watching know about these things, but there's these plastic pocket pages. There's 9 pocket pages for baseball cards, and then there's 1 pocket page that's 8.5 by 11, I guess, or 8.5 by 9, something like that. Probably 8.5 by 11 for 1 page. So I started putting my cartoons into those, and I don't have to frame those because they're already covered. And I don't have to have to worry about nailing into the wall because you don't want to have all these pockmarked walls when you're working on this. So I invented something that I call the H-channel method of display. So the only way I can help people understand what that is, if you've ever seen paneling in somebody's basement or house, the two panels butt up against each other, but they don't have just that touching. They have a plastic strip between the two, and the, the panel, the wood panel sticks into this H-channel, a channel on one side, a channel on the other with plastic in the middle. So I decided if I put those horizontally, then these 8.5 by 11 plastic pages can rest in the top channel, and then I can put another H-channel atop that and have another set of 8.5 by 11 plastic pocket pages. So I have of these. One wall is basically set up now. I have maybe 8 or 9 across, and I have 5 or 6 up. The whole wall is covered with these. And I can also do the— I have poster-sized ones that can go in those too. So they'll, instead of being this far apart, they'll be 2.5 feet or a foot and a half apart. So that makes it easy, and I don't have to put even nails because they said I could use finish nails, but I've been using pushpins. And since they're light, they're not framed with glass and wood. The pushpins hold up the H-channels.

Ron, I, you know what, first of all, you're such a great speaker. You're so pleasant. I actually can see almost like where people like QR codes, and then where someone would then take their phone and then pops a video of you explaining that section because you do such a great job and you're not going to be there every single day. So that may be something to consider is that we create, we create videos, you know, keep it simple, 3-minute videos on whatever that information is, 3 to 5 minutes, maybe they want more. And then a QR code. So when they're walking and they're like, oh, I want to learn more, boom, there's Ron, gives the video of, and you're so fine. I think we should do that.

I, I know nothing about QR codes, but I do know something about being on TV. I have a TV show myself. I had 2 of them recently. In the past couple years. One of them was called Rendezvous, Ron's View of the Day, which is the French word rendezvous, meaning to meet.

I love that.

That was in the '90s. Some of those are on YouTube now. And I also have a current one called 30 Minutes with Ron that's been on since 2014, I think.

Oh my gosh, and how could someone find that, 30 Minutes with Ron?

Go on YouTube and type in 30 Minutes with Ron.

All right, and I will put the link down below. I love that, Ron. Yeah, 'cause I mean, I haven't seen you in years and I'm like in love with you right now.

I—

people are going to want you. They're going to want you. They're going to want like the brain. And if you could give it in a video and really explain it, I think that could tie everything together. And even if it's whatever sections you have, it could be 10 videos, it's not gonna— it's not gonna hurt anything. It's just gonna be a lovely for them to get really get that information. So I think that that is really important. All right, I am really so excited. So what are the game plan now? Do you have an idea of when the museum, and give everyone the name of the museum.

Well, the name of the museum used to be Museum of Connecticut Cartoonists and Illustrators, because I like to have whatever I have as an acronym spell a word that you can pronounce. So that was MOCAI. It sounds kind of Native American, which is appropriate for the casino, I thought. But then I thought about it, you know, I want these to be able to go nationwide. I want there to be one MOCAI at least in every state in the country, but there's not a lot of states that begin with C, so that could have been a problem. So I changed the name to Museum of Creative Cartoonists and Illustrators. So now I can put Thomas Nast in there because he was a creative cartoonist, and any cartoonist I feel like. I could put in somebody from California, but then when we start franchising it, because I think big, then they can go out there and they can have copies of what we have, or they can put all their stuff together. And we can have Mokai all over the place.

You know, honestly, you should think big. And this is the, you know, this, this, like the last few years is all about the mindset and that vision board. And, and, you know, if you're thinking it into existence, so that's what you need, right? Anytime you start a business, you need that idea and that dream. And then the vision is, you already got your vision, you already know your mission statement, you already know all of that. So I feel like this dream definitely could come true. Are you going to have like a jury panel? How will you choose which— because I know you analyze them, so do you have a set of what really makes a good cartoonist?

Admit, yeah, starting out I think I'm going to make the choices for which classes are in— have the inductees. So I'm putting 10 to 15 in each class, uh, so they'll be up for about 2 months and then I'll take them down, but they'll still remain on the website, I hope, because you'll be in charge of how we do that. I don't know how to do that. And then we'll put up a new 10 or 15 from, like, if it goes from January to March, then it'd be from March to, uh, what, May, I guess it would. March, yeah, uh, yeah, I'm pretty good with months but not when I'm thinking about it. So funny. So I do, I will have a board, uh, a committee, an advisory committee, but I really don't want anybody to tell me what to do, so they'll just be helpers.

I love it. Well, that's because you have all the years of experience, you know, and you have the eye what to look at. The average person, we just enjoy a chuckle and a laugh, and that's funny, and, and enjoy it. And Dad, you know, I love that my father knew, you know, I love that he combined the comic strip art with like, like the dentist, or so, and, and really combining this. So it's Beetle Bailey And then what was some other cartoons that people remember that were, were popular?

I used to videotape for Herb, and he told me one time that Iwu Takamoto was going to be coming. He was the guy who created Scooby-Doo, and I thought, oh, that's fantastic, but Herb, don't pay me in money this time. I want an original signed Iwu Takamoto cartoon saying, to the House of Gags, which is what we call our house sometimes. And so I videotaped it and I asked, he gave me his cartoon as Scooby-Doo and it has for the House of Gags. And so now I have an original Iwu Takamoto. And while he was there, he was telling the story of how Scooby-Doo's name came to be. Have you ever heard that story?

Please share it, please share it.

It turns out that Iwu Takamoto liked Frank Sinatra, and Frank Sinatra had a song where he sang dooby dooby doo. And that's where Scooby-Doo was taken from.

Oh, I love that, Ron. You are an excellent, excellent, uh, guest. And I mean, you could do your own show. Maybe you'll just have— maybe you'll do another show. So you have the 30 Minutes with Ron, and then you could do one where you're interviewing the cartoonists that are still alive, because that would be amazing.

I've actually had some people on, a couple of illustrators who were on. Tony Falcone, the muralist I told you about, he was on one of the shows. That might even be one of the ones on YouTube.

Oh, all right, if I find it, I'll post that one too. I love this idea. I think that what you're doing is really any way that we can educate and, and teach people. And also, it still has to be very, uh, like stress-relieving to do. I know, like, you know, people like the coloring and all of that, but even cartooning— is that something that someone can learn how to do, like Bob Ross style?

With— well, I can teach anyone to cartoon using the, uh, the, the annamalate method. But there's another method that I used to teach my students at my K through 6 or K through 5 that I called long distance tracing. And when you hear this, it makes so much sense. If I were to give anyone a cardboard stencil of a horse, they could trace that stencil and it would look like a horse because they're just pushing their pencil up against the outline and they know where the pencil has to travel. Well, if you picture a horse or look at an actual horse, and treat that horse as if it's a stencil. First you take your pencil and trace the real horse, and then it's almost like it trained your hand for that moment, for that few seconds of what that stencil was, and it helps you to draw a horse much better. It's what they call a contour drawing in actual art classes, but I call it long-distance tracing because it makes more sense.

Oh my gosh, so you really could— wow, wow. I would want to take that class.

But you can do it yourself. You don't even need a class. You can— whatever you want to look at, if you want to draw a glass of water, you just trace it first in real life without actually even touching the glass, and then you just transfer what you've just been doing to the paper.

Oh, I love that. My daughter just came in. Alana, you want to say hi to Mr. Gagliardi? Hi. He's my grandpa. This is my daughter Alana. You know, wait, because I'm on the thing, so it's a little loud. So anyways, I'm working at a museum. Oh, very nice.

Oh my God, said the pumpkin to the squash.

He loves that. She loves Amazon. Ron, thank you so much for this interview. You know, it's funny, I was just planning on just getting some information for you to write notes, but you know what, forget what I said in the beginning because I— we— this is too good not to share. And I love your story. For Lonnie, have to hear the story from the beginning too. Thank you. No, because you know what, you got so many golden nuggets here, but the fact that you can also maybe teach someone else, a young child that is getting bullied, whether it's from a teacher or whether it's from another student, that they're able to come up with some ways. So I think that's really brilliant. You are really a lovely, lovely man, and you just—

I wish I had done my lighting better. I didn't, didn't do much very good lighting here.

No, that's okay. You know what, because it's so real. My shows are always raw. There's no prep needed, so this just kind of played into anyways, but You're just— I'm so glad that we're doing this. I'm so glad that I'm going to have the opportunity to continue to work more with you and to help you to get this vision of yours, your dream, because this is really special. Now, do you have children? I don't even know. I know you're married.

Yes, uh, Gina is, I think, 45 or 46, and Jeff is 40, and she's an educational administrator in Massachusetts with special ed. And Jeff is about to become the first Dr. Gag. He's getting his doctorate from Southern in social work.

You're so lucky, and we need more social workers.

I want to be the first Dr. Gag.

I love that. You're honorary. I love that. Ron, thank you so much. Oh, and one last thing. So tell me about your plans for the holiday.

Well, we get to visit with Gina and her family up in Massachusetts. We're all triple vaccinated, so we're not too concerned at this point. Jeff was supposed to come here the day after Christmas, but the kids that he's with have been exposed to COVID and they have to quarantine. So he's going to— we're going to postpone Christmas until like February, I guess. I don't know.

Sorry.

Sorry. Hey, I know that isn't even a disappointment to me because I'll do it then. You know, you'll do it then. I don't believe in disappointment. So, oh, I love that. That would be negative.

No, I love that. I love that. I'm a double B with a V and add an F.

Oh my goodness, that sounds very alphabeticalized.

Yes, yes. And I let everyone know, so when I go someplace— but still, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's crazy, right? We're Florida, so everything is open.

So I should add that I've been calling myself a comicstorian, the history of the comics. Historian of the comics.

I love that, comic story, and I love that. Can I use that?

You may, yes.

Yeah, wait, is that a real term or do I—

I made it up.

Oh, you need to get that in. Okay, who can help us get that into Wikipedia as a name? I think you can add certain things to the dictionary, so we'll have to do that.

I tried that, it could be interesting.

Yeah, yeah. All right, well, before I post this, I'll peek into it to see I am so glad. I'm sorry about the mix-up today. I'm just a mix-up person, but I am so glad to speak with you. I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed this conversation. You are excellent, everyone. I'll get all the information on the museum, and we'll have another one because I know, Ron, we're gonna have to do a tour and show everyone what you will get in the history. And then you want art students to come, so you're going to invite teachers.

Yes, but I forgot to tell you, I just had a conversation with your brother Jerry. And he surprised me again. He said, you know that third wall in the middle there? He said, I want to have that wall available for student exhibits so that we can encourage students to become cartoonists and illustrators. And I said, well, I had a few set to go in that wall, so now we'll just have either the whole half of the wall or the whole wall for kids and or even young adults who are hoping to become cartoonists and illustrators, and we'll maybe get some folks encouraged to on the way up.

I think that is brilliant. Anytime that children can have their art on display and have other people see it makes so much sense to me. And even teachers want to show off their art, so I think it's all fantastic. All right, well, we're going to watch this museum grow. We're going to see it. It'll come to Florida next because I'm here. Of course, um, Volusia County would love it, or Orlando market. So thank you, Ron. Have a great—

okay.

Merry Christmas. And I will send you the video so you can watch it with your family too.

All right. And don't forget with this COVID thing going on, my name is into this. It's forever remembered. It's the coronavirus and the, the Omicron. So I'm there.

Jealous. You are right. That's so funny.

And remember now, because of all this stuff with people and their health, I tell people to go to health.

Thank you so much for the laugh. You are awesome. You are awesome. All right, have a great rest of the day. What was that?

You're pretty darn good yourself.

Oh my gosh, thank you. You— I, I can't even tell you. You really could take someone in a whole nother direction in how they're feeling. Luckily, I'm pretty positive. I'm a very positive person myself. Oh yes, you could make someone even positive, more positive. So I love it. So So thank you so much, Ron. Have a great rest of the holiday, and I will talk to you right— well, whenever you're ready. I'll be around next week.

So, all right.

Okay, well, I'm excited. Thank you.