Tony Auth, an informed and generous artist

Tony Auth was endlessly curious.

He was always absorbing information, soaking up the latest nuances of political developments, luxuriating in revelations about historical figures, devouring books obscure and famous, taking in current movies and TV shows.

His many enthusiasms spilled over into his work every day. His cartoons in The Inquirer were crisp and spare, but they reflected a deep understanding of the complexity of politics, history, science, and art. And of human nature.

Tony was playful, both in work and in life. His guffaws would often precede him as he took drafts of his daily cartoons around to newsroom colleagues like me.

"Doesn't that look like Boehner?"

"Did you hear what Obama said this morning?"

"If I make City Hall look like a whorehouse, do these fishnet stockings work?"

He was an inveterate optimist, always convinced his glass was at least half-full, preferably with a single-malt Islay scotch.

In a profession overpopulated with cynics, Tony was a hopeful journalist. He was convinced things could get better - would get better - if good people kept up the good fight. He dove joyfully into the fray every day, using his pen to pillory the powerful and defend the downtrodden.

He was a voracious reader. He loved biographies, political histories, spy fiction, and noir detective novels. He was devoted to the Joseph Fox Bookshop on Sansom Street, constantly ordering new books and treating the Fox staff to whimsical hand-drawn bookmarks.

(Tony was the first person I knew to discover Harry Potter. He got the original British edition before the boy wizard made it in print to America.)

His reading informed his work: Every day, he would arrive at his corner office in the Inquirer Building, brimming with ideas from his perusal of the morning papers and the radio shows he listened to on his drive in from Wynnewood.

His art-cluttered office was filled from floor to ceiling with books. Books on dinosaurs, illustrators, Churchill, Kennedy, FDR, whiskey, furniture, birds, cars, airplanes, and boats. Always boats.

Tony loved everything nautical. He and his wife, Eliza, and daughters Katie and Emily loved sailing, and Tony spent much of his spare time at the family's Shore house at Ocean Gate, tinkering on a boat or mixing dark-and-stormy cocktails for friends. The sea seeped into many of his cartoons, which often featured Shore scenes, sailboats, or his all-time favorites, pirates and Vikings.

Despite the renown he achieved as a Pulitzer-winning cartoonist, he remained open and accessible to everyone, from aspiring art students to visiting governors and mayors. At lunchtime, he would regularly belly up to the counter at the Dutch Eating Place in the Reading Terminal Market for his usual (a sloppy joe and fries - invariably followed by a scoop of cherry vanilla from Bassett's).

He was generous with his talent and his time. Although his daily cartooning was a full-time job, he found time to illustrate stories in the Sunday magazine, create farewell caricatures for departing staffers, and to reward colleagues with signed copies of cartoons inspired by their stories.

He created whimsical Christmas cards each year to send to friends.

When he learned that my daughter admired his Mini Cooper, he presented her with a birds-eye drawing of the car. Then he gave her a chance to drive the stick-shift vehicle, balkily, through the streets of Ocean Gate.

As much as he loved his work and his workplace, his greatest joy was the three women in his life. Eliza, Katie, and Emily were his favorite topic of conversation - the girls' trials and triumphs in sailing, school, and work, and Eliza's successes as a painter.

As staff cartoonists became an endangered species at American newspapers, Tony lamented that young artists wouldn't get an opportunity to follow in his footsteps. He reveled in the challenge of chronicling history on a daily deadline, and he was very aware that he was part of a passing moment in journalism.

As always, he captured his sentiments with ink on paper. In a cartoon created for a staff reunion, he depicted dancing dinosaurs in party hats, sloshing beer from upraised mugs, cheerily singing:

"Those were the days, my friend,

"We thought they'd never end . . .."

215-854-4587