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Tony Auth: A light that never dimmed

Maybe the electrical problems that delayed Sunday's memorial service for Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Tony Auth were meant as metaphor. The power went out, but the light never dimmed.

Tony Auth, Inquirer undated.
Tony Auth, Inquirer undated.Read more

Maybe the electrical problems that delayed Sunday's memorial service for Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Tony Auth were meant as metaphor.

The power went out, but the light never dimmed.

"In your life, Tony Auth, you welcomed the stranger, spoke up for the outcast, punctured the pretensions of the hypocrite," said longtime colleague Chris Satullo, quoting what he imagined God saying to Auth, a not particularly devout new arrival at heaven's gate.

"You were devoted to those who loved you and you were disinclined to despise those who did not," Satullo said. "Besides, you made me laugh. Boy, did you make me laugh. You are in, my friend."

That was the light expressed by Satullo, a vice president at WHYY who worked with Auth there and at The Inquirer, and by more than a dozen speakers at Auth's memorial service at the Independence Seaport Museum on the Delaware River waterfront.

Auth, 72, a digital artist at WHYY NewsWorks.org and a longtime mainstay of The Inquirer's Editorial Board, died Sept. 14 after a struggle with cancer.

Sunday's equipment failure interrupted power to 200 businesses along the waterfront from noon to about 3 p.m., pushing the service back an hour.

But the delay provided more time for Auth's family, friends, and colleagues - from The Inquirer, WHYY, and the ranks of professional cartoonists - to share hugs and stories on Penn's Landing as the sunlight glinted on the river.

There were tears at the service, but fond laughter from the 430-plus people who attended more than overcame them.

Former mayor and governor Ed Rendell talked about what it was like to be the frequent subject of Auth's cartoons.

"You knew sooner or later you'd have to face the pen of Tony Auth, and you hoped that the good would outweigh the bad," Rendell said, grousing, as the group laughed, that whenever Auth portrayed him as a hero, he was thin and athletic on the page, but every time "he was ribbing me, I looked like a 350-pound ogre."

Rendell said what made Auth special was his willingness to speak his mind at a time when so many are afraid to take risks. "He ventured into subjects others avoided like the plague," he said.

Mayor Nutter sent a letter, as did well-known cartoonists Pat Oliphant and Jules Feiffer. Cartoonists Signe Wilkinson of the Philadelphia Daily News and Joel Pett of Kentucky's Lexington Herald-Leader spoke.

They and past and present colleagues at The Inquirer and WHYY described Auth's work ethic, enthusiasm, and openness to ideas, and his daughters, Katie and Emily, talked about their father, a man easily bamboozled into letting them stay up late.

"We could indefinitely delay having to go to sleep by asking my Dad any question about science," Katie said, evoking more laughter as her sister fought back tears and their mother, artist Eliza Drake Auth, smiled fondly.

"All we had to do," Katie Auth said, "is say something like, 'Wait, Dad, how does gravity work?' "

Auth loved Bob Dylan and humiliated his daughters by singing Dylan's songs in public.

When it came to homework assignments that involved art, "he officially started out as an adviser," Katie Auth said, prompting a laugh of recognition from the baby boomer generation in attendance, who could anticipate the next part of her story - the part where the parent takes over the child's school project.

"We would bring it in to our teachers," she said. "Clearly, they knew we hadn't done it."

Friends also spoke. Bob Brecht described Auth's passion for anything involving boats - the many that he owned, plus a fascination with pirates and a longtime admiration of Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure novel Treasure Island illustrated by N.C. Wyeth.

Typical of Auth was to turn a routine visit into an adventure. "We need to create a pirate newspaper," Auth told Brecht one day. Auth and Brecht drew up a front page, with Auth providing the art and Brecht the copy. The newspaper, Ransacked, had a circulation of two - Auth and Brecht.

Former Atlantic City impresario Reese Palley, 93, said he and Auth spent an hour a day on the phone. "We would talk about everything," he said. "We would talk about nothing."

CNN news anchor Jake Tapper described how Auth mentored him as a 14-year-old with ambitions as a cartoonist and then throughout his high school and college years. Tapper never became a cartoonist, although he works in journalism.

These days, as a busy professional and father himself, Tapper said, he now understands how generous Auth was with his time. Tapper's theme was repeated by many other speakers.

And so, he said, as much as people laud Auth for his professional contributions, "nobody is here because of how talented he was," Tapper said. "Everybody is here because of how kind he was."

>Inquirer.com

For a multimedia tribute and cartoon collection, visit www.inquirer.com/authEndText

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