Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 1, 1995 TAG: 9505030013
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
As the comic strip's artist and author, she had known it was going to happen for a year.
"I mourned his loss a long time," Johnston said in a telephone interview last week. "I loved that character - drawing him, being him. I didn't want to lose him."
But, she said, "I had this awful obstacle of the lifespan of pets."
The popular strip chronicles the lives of the fictional Patterson family, which included the lovable sheepdog, Farley, until April 20.
The strip "follows real-life time," so the characters "age and develop and move on to other things" just like real people, Johnston said. Family members in the strip have made passages through puberty and high school and mid-life crises.
A week and a half ago, 14-year-old Farley died just after rescuing the family toddler, April, from a rain-swollen stream.
"For Better or For Worse" readers across this country and in Johnston's Canadian homeland were heartbroken.
"I picked up the paper that morning," Barbara Landon said, "and through tears and whatever, I said, I'm crying over a cartoon dog and every other dog I've ever loved.'"
Landon, vice president for development at Blue Ridge Public Television, had already predicted the pet's death to her co-workers as they followed the sequence on the rescue. Still, she was moved by the dog's final strip.
"It brings your life home," she said. "It's more than just a cartoon. It made me think of my own granddaughter and of all the dogs I've loved."
Some of Landon's co-workers were upset with Johnston and this newspaper for letting the dog die. So were other readers.
"I felt like I was sucker punched," said Dale Bivens of Roanoke. "I felt like I had been intentionally manipulated."
Bivens, manager of a tanning salon and a self-described dog lover, said he knows it's a fictional story but "it really bothered me."
"On the front page, I'm used to seeing terrible things," he said. He doesn't want them in his comic strips as well.
"I was so sure the dog was just resting, that they were going to bring him back," said Betty Volz of Roanoke. "They could not possibly let that dog die.
"I just hated it. That dog died a hero."
The fact that Farley made it out of the water almost fooled Richard Dillard, an author and Hollins College English professor who said he had suspected Farley's demise was imminent.
Johnston "has been preparing for it for a year," Dillard said. The strip has shown Farley aging, his joints creaking and eyesight deteriorating.
"She handled it really well," he said.
And the Pattersons recently acquired another dog - Edgar, the offspring of what Johnston called Farley's "May-December relationship with the mutt next door."
Farley's sexual adventure angered some readers, Johnston said. They wrote to inform her that the dog should have been neutered - a story line that may be pursued with Edgar.
Reaction to Farley's death has been interesting, she said, ranging from anger to curiosity to a query from an undertaker who was interested in having the author make a speech on grief.
An amused Johnston declined. Nonetheless, she's addressing the subject in the strip.
"I'm finding out from teachers that they are using the stories to teach kids about grief," she said.
Johnston is confident that many readers found the story line cathartic.
"I know that the bulk of the mail is going to come from people who want to share their experiences about their family pets," she said.
Not all of those pets will have been heros like Farley, though. His noble exit was suggested by Johnston's sister-in-law, a veterinarian. It was the same sister-in-law who reminded Johnston that Farley already had lived well past the normal lifespan of a sheepdog.
"She said he was too wonderful a character to take to the vet to be put to sleep," Johnston said, and recommended instead that Farley "go out as a hero with a great story."
In a twist of fate that couldn't have been anticipated, Farley's last gasp came in the same editions that reported the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.
The strip had been prepared two months earlier and the timing at first seemed unfortunate. But a few days later, on April 23, the strip provided a poignant lesson in dealing with death. It was appropriate not only for the fictional Pattersons but for a nation dealing with tragedy.
"We are temporary," April's father, John, tells her. "Our lives are on loan to us just for a while ... and nobody knows how long each life will be. That's why we have to take care of each other, and to remember every day, to appreciate the ones we love."
by CNB