Billy DeBeck Memorial Award
The earliest NCS award was the Billy DeBeck Memorial Award, known as the Barney from the character in DeBeck's popular comic strip Barney Google and Snuffy Smith. After DeBeck died on Veteran's Day, 1942, Mary DeBeck remarried (as Mary Bergman) and created the DeBeck Award in 1946. She also made the annual presentation of engraved silver cigarette cases (with DeBeck's characters etched on the cover) to the eight winners spanning the years 1946 to 1953.
Mary Bergman died February 14, 1953, aboard a National Airlines DC-6 which went down in the Gulf of Mexico during a thunderstorm on a flight from Tampa to New Orleans. In 1954, following her death, the DeBeck Award was renamed the Reuben Award. When the award name was changed in 1954, all of the prior eight winners were given Reuben statuettes designed by and named after the NCS' first president, Rube Goldberg. The Reuben Award was executed in bronze by sculptor and editorial cartoonist Bill Crawford.
Read more about this topic: National Cartoonists Society
Famous quotes containing the words billy, memorial and/or award:
“Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda,
Who’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?
And he sang as he watched and waited while his billy boiled:
‘Who’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?’”
—Andrew Barton Peterson (1864–1941)
“When I received this [coronation] ring I solemnly bound myself in marriage to the realm; and it will be quite sufficient for the memorial of my name and for my glory, if, when I die, an inscription be engraved on a marble tomb, saying, “Here lieth Elizabeth, which reigned a virgin, and died a virgin.””
—Elizabeth I (1533–1603)
“The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)