HIT: Doonesbury alter egos

[Vona Genelle Van Cleef <vona@TENET.EDU>]

OK, I will now attempt to "post a hit" (and please tell me if there's an
easier way than simply summarizing or re-entering replies that I've received!
Forwarding to LM_NET perhaps?)

Here's what I found in _Authors & Artists for Young Adults_ at the UTEP
Library this morning:

The cartoon is a spinoff from "Bull Tales," a cartoon Trudeau developed
while he was at Yale. "Bull Tales" centered on Yale star quarterback
Brian Dowling (whose cartoon alter ego is B.D.) and "lampooned aspects of
college life from campus radicals to Yale President Kingman Brewster."

When Trudeau was persuaded to syndicate, he "rechristened the cartoon
'Doonesbury,' after another character, Mike Doonesbury. The name is a
combination of "doone" (which Trudeau defined as 'well-meaning fool') and
'Pillsbury,' the last name of one of Trudeau's former roommates, a
flour-fortune heir on whom Mike is loosely based."

Others:
The Reverend Scot Sloan = based on both a roommate of Trudeau's who
became a lawyer and minister and on former Yale chaplain William Sloane
Coffin, Jr.
Mark Slackmeyer = Yale activist Mark Zanger
Uncle Duke = journalist Hunter S. Thompson
Joanie Caucus = modeled after a cousing of Trudeau's "who left her
husband and children to create a new life for herself"

The article doesn't mention Congresswoman Lacey Davenport, but other LM_NET
correspondents [so how do I delete an inadvertent space?]
did, suggesting that she was based on "someone like Madeline Kunin,"
or Margaret Chase Smith, or NJ Congresswoman Millicent Fenwick, so take
your pick there!

And Chris House at Yale mentioned a Black character based on Calvin
Hill-- a receiver of many of B.D.'s passes-- who is now the father of
Grant Hill, the NBA Rookie of the Year.

This has been fun-- and I'm glad my "trivia search" didn't get panned!
Gotta go make wedding mints for various and assorted friends getting
married this month and next--

Vona Van Cleef, librarian, LBJ Elementary, El Paso, TX = vona@tenet.edu

'Night all!