To the editor:

I wonder whether anyone noticed the partial “Curb Reporter” logo on the clipping reproduced with the article about Paul Cantrell in your July 15 issue?

When Washington Evening Star editorial cartoonist Jim Berryman visited the Bulletin office in the 40s he quickly drew the Curb Reporter logo that has been used ever since. I was the “printer’s devil” in residence at the time, and marveled that the old “cut” had survived as well as it had.

One of my jobs was to cast and mount on a wood block the reverse-image soft lead plates (called “cuts”) used to print the paper by the “letterpress” printing method of those days. We received paper “mats” from advertisers, which served as the face mold. For photographs and drawings we had to send away to have more durable masters made that came to us pre-mounted on a wood block.

Such was the case for Mr. Berryman’s drawing. I think the Bulletin office still has the “cuts” for both the old and new Curb Reporter logos. They might even have the original artwork for the Berryman one; it is a valuable treasure if they do.

When I moved to Hampton, Va. in the late 60s I bought many of my landscape plants from Berryman’s Nursery in nearby Newport News. I told Mr. Berryman that the only other Berryman I knew of was Jim . . . “He’s my brother,” came the response. So I took him a copy of the Bulletin, since I have always been a subscriber as a member of the extended Bulletin “family.”

My fellow service members and I have spread the Bulletin all over the world, starting with WWII, when our mailing list tripled from less than a thousand to more than two thousand copies. I was one of the “Bulletin boys” who single-wrapped the little papers every day after school to go to the APOs and Fleet POs.

 

-Garland O. Goodwin,

Columbus