THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 16, 1994 TAG: 9410130199
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 24 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Mary Ellen Riddle
LENGTH: Medium: 99 lines
HATTERAS CARTOONIST Jack Hebenstreit wasn't popular with the nuns who taught him in Philadelphia, but his parochial school education did a lot to further his career as an artist.
Whenever Hebenstreit acted up - which was often - he was detained after school and forced to draw projects.
``I drew all their signs and things,'' said Hebenstreit, 67. ``All the nuns told my mother I'd probably be in jail by the time I was 16.''
All except one eighth-grade nun, who proclaimed that Hebenstreit would be OK because ``he's going to be an artist.''
Hebenstreit, who currently draws a strip called ``Capt. Otto Banks'' for The Sportfishing Report magazine, was in second grade when he began copying cartoons.
He drew his first series in high school. A graduating senior had already published three ``Ferdie the Freshie'' strips in Northeast High School's newspaper by the time Hebenstreit inherited the job. But it was Hebenstreit who elevated ``Ferdie'' to infamous heights.
``I picked up where he left off and did that for four years,'' Hebenstreit said.
Once a month, the newspaper featured the tribulations of Ferdie. ``Ferdie typified the high school freshman,'' Hebenstreit said. ``These were the days of the zoot suiters, and of course the war was on. They were all jitter bugs.''
Rendered in pen and ink, Ferdie sported tight-cuffed pants with wide knees and a key chain that looped from pocket to calf. He brought Hebenstreit popularity among his peers, but not always among the teachers.
``I caricatured teachers,'' he said. ``I was suspended two times for that. I took the cartoon directly to the printer without having the editor see it.''
An instructor was offended by Ferdie's vocal ways.
``He was an English teacher. He was very suave, always wore a suit and tie and had a flower in his lapel. He was immaculately dressed,'' Hebenstreit said. ``In each panel I changed his suit, and I had the flower grow bigger and bigger.''
The comic read: ``Ferdie, How come you don't like Shakespeare?'' ``What do you mean?'' ``I have to like Shakespeare.'' ``If I didn't, Hebenstreit would be kicked out of school.''
After Hebenstreit graduated, a Philadelphia paper asked, ``What's going to happen to Ferdie?'' Hebenstreit said his departure from school signaled the character's demise.
Hebenstreit calls himself a liberal, but he strongly upholds the merits of a traditional art education. His tutelage began at age 9 at the Philadelphia Art Museum, where the federal government was funding the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project.
``Grandmother found out about it and I got to go to classes out there,'' he said. ``I got out of school. We were doing large murals and paintings.''
Hebenstreit and his peers painted pictures that were sent to post offices around the country. The aspiring artist also studied modern paintings for two years at the Barnes Foundation outside of Philadelphia, and on the GI bill he attended the nearby Hussian School of Art.
``We did drawings from casts,'' Hebenstreit said. ``We spent hours and hours. We had models - three hours a day of nude models. I was an abstract painter, far from doing cartoons at this point.''
Because Hussian was forced by the government to provide commercial art classes to the GIs, Hebenstreit also studied under professionals from the advertising field. After graduation from Hussian, he turned his attention to commercial art.
``I joined at ad agency as a paste-up man for $25 a week - a 48-hour week,'' said Hebenstreit, who worked his commercial job by day and painted by night. ``I would sleep maybe two to three hours a night.''
Eventually, Hebenstreit and a friend opened an advertising agency that flourished for 25 years. During this time Hebenstreit raised six children, divorced and remarried, and thrived in the smoky '50s-'60s music scene.
Jazz greats like Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker and Count Basie ``jammed'' in Philly's after-hours clubs that Hebenstreit frequented.
Inspired by the scene, Hebenstreit drew a series of ``Jazz Listeners'' cartoons. Several of these would later hang in Dizzy's home.
The music also inspired many portraits of the musicians. Some paintings were Expressionistic in style, while others reflected a combination of Cubism and the Futurism style, all beautifully illustrating Hebenstreit's classical training.
It wasn't until Hebenstreit and his wife, Barbara Satterthwaite, moved to Hatteras that he returned to cartooning with any regularity. Ferdie's likeness was reincarnated by the birth of his sister, ``Hattie Hatteras,'' in a comic that was published in a local paper.
But Hattie was too political and revealing for some locals. She was laid to rest, only to appear periodically in fishing tournament books in a less satirical format.
Hebenstreit combined his love of fishing with his innate sense of humor to produce ``Capt. Otto Banks.'' Otto's main function is to poke fun at charter boat anglers. Hebenstreit's camaraderie with local captains lends Otto credibility.
The cartoonist enjoys creating both lighthearted and serious visual anecdotes about life, but he firmly believes it is essential to have not only flair but also strength in drawing. It is evident in Hebenstreit's command of the pen that Ferdie, Hattie and Otto have all had a classical upbringing. by CNB