Melissa Lattimore sent me this and I thought it was deserving of a wider readership…
Thank you so much for the the tribute to Stan Lynde (whose name I have apparently been mispronouncing for 50 years, sigh).
In the closet of my back bedroom I have a large wooden album of Sunday Rick O'Shay strips put together by my father, who died 30 years ago next month. Daddy was a huge fan of the strip and especially Lynde's attention to detail (he could tell from the art what gun Hipshot carried, for example) and eagerly looked forward to the strip in the Sunday paper (our local paper did not carry the weekday strips) to the extent that when the News-Messenger tried to drop it, he started a letter campaign to keep it — and succeeded. He was very disappointed when Lynde stopped drawing it! Later on when I moved to the Northwest and subscribed to the Seattle Times, it was carrying Latigo. So my Dad and I set up a trade: I cut out Latigo every day and sent them to him and he cut Prince Valiant out of the Dallas Morning News for me.
I guess I figured Lynde was long dead as well, as he is associated so closely with my father in my mind. Wish I had known he was still alive until this week, so I could have written him and let him know how much pleasure he brought my dad.
A lot of people were disappointed when Mr. Lynde stopped drawing Rick O'Shay. The Los Angeles Times, which was one of his major outlets, dropped it the minute it was no longer by him and printed up a notice that said something like, "Rick O'Shay will no longer appear. Stan Lynde no longer draws it." The way it was worded, it suggested the strip no longer existed…so my city never saw the ones written by Marian Dern and drawn by Alfredo Alcala, and didn't know it was continuing. If Lynde wasn't making enough money off it when he had the L.A. Times, I hate to think what Dern and Alcala must have made off it when they didn't have it. (The story of how they were selected to succeed Lynde is over here, by the way.)
After a while, Dern and Alcala were replaced by Mel Keefer and the L.A. Times immediately been running it again, commencing with the first of Keefer's dailies. I'm guessing Mel had a friend or a fan (more likely, the former) at the paper who reinstated it on the strength of Mel's name. A lot of Angelenos were surprised to see Rick back from the dead…but then after a while, Rick and Hipshot went away again. Those who missed them would be very pleased at what Lynde later did with them once he'd acquired full ownership.