Little League coach
Paul Conrad was pulling up outfield fence posts to move to the new Silver Spur Little League field when Ron Stankey met the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner. Conrad was the league president and had designed the league’s logo – two intertwined S’s with spurs.
Stankey was the chief umpire and coach of the Yankees. Conrad’s oldest son Jamie was his first baseman.
“We called Jamie the Statue of Liberty because he was so tall,” Stankey recalled.
“When Casey Stengel died, Paul did a cartoon of him rising over Yankee Stadium, on his way to heaven. He autographed a copy for me and wrote, ‘To Ron Stankey, the other great Yankee Manager.’”
“I was his insurance agent off and on for years.
“Paul had two lives — that of the pen and that of the peninsula. He was inspirational with the kids. He didn’t use intimidation as a coach. He used his skills in communications. One of his favorite sayings was, ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going.’ I don’t know his win-loss record, but he got in there with both hands and feet.
“He’d speak to high school classes, always extemporaneously. He’d talk from the heart, tell it like it is. He liked to mentor young people.
“The Community Association gave him an award in 1985 or 1986.
“He loved playing piano, but it had to be in the key of C. The evening couldn’t end until he asked my wife to sing ‘Danny Boy.’
“His sons Jamie and David were the same ages as my boys Matt and John.
“Paul, Dale Bowman and I bought a house together when our boys all went to Loyola Marymount. We called the House of Westchester.”
“One thing is we never engaged in was political talk, unless there was a newcomer to the circle, because it would always set off a long, vigorous discussion.
“Frankly, he didn’t feel he did his job as an editorial cartoonist unless 50 percent of the people were angry with him. That’s how he measured the quality of his cartoons.
“He became a bike rider in later years to keep in shape. You could see him pedaling around Crest Road.
Ranch hand
Paul and Kay Conrad lived around the corner from Dale and Barbara Bowman in the Mesa neighborhood, in identical Ray Watt tract homes. Both families had four kids.
“Our second grade sons introduced us. They’re 51 now,” said Barbara Bowman.
“Kay and I worked together on the Little Company of Mary Sellebration Auction and the four of us played a lot of golf together. He hollered at the ball a lot.
“Every Thanksgiving our families went to our ranch in Santa Barbara County. Paul loved to hunt dove and quail with my husband. Anything the guys shot, they had to clean and cook. There was no killing just to kill.
“Paul carved Nixon on the porch at the ranch. Paul was doing crucifixes and my husband said to him, ‘You’ve done that guy every which way from Sunday. Why don’t you do what you know how to do.’ He was always mad at Nixon, so that’s who he did. It was his first bronze.
“He shot a rattlesnake that’s still on the wall at the ranch.
“We have a lot of rattle snakes,” Dale Bowman said. “One weekend my granddaughter’s looking out the front porch window and says, ‘Grandpa, whose big dog is that? It was a bear. We have 360 acres abutting the Los Padres National Forrest. And there are plenty of bigger ranches around us.
“I shout for everyone to get out of the house, into the backyard. Just then, Con comes in carrying a .22 rifle and he sees a rattle snake coiled up ready to strike the bear.
“I’ve got a rule. You can shoot snakes with eyes in the front of their heads because they’re naturally vicious and need to be taught to be good. Snakes with eyes on the side of their heads are prey, so you leave them alone. This was a sidewinder. They have eyes in the front, so you can shot them.
“Paul shot and killed it. But you really can’t miss a sidewinder. Just like the missiles, they’re heat seekers. So if a bullet comes near it, they stop it.
“The bear hung out in our yard all day. He must have thought, ‘That guy saved my life, so I’ll be good.’ He climbed up a tree and we talked to him.
“Con was pretty good with cattle and horses. He gave the cattle shots and helped us brand them.
“One weekend I had five Pulitzer winners building a barbed wire fence for me. Con was three, and there was Oliphant and another guy whose name I can’t remember.
“That weekend Oliphant, his wife and I were drinking Finlandia that Oliphant had brought from New York. It had been in the the freezer all day and we weren’t getting drunk, but we were enjoying ourselves.
“Paul was on the potty and an owl in a tree next to the deck goes, ‘Hoot.’ So Con goes, ‘Hoot.’ Then the owl goes ‘Hoot, hoot.’ And Conrad goes, ‘Hoot, hoot.’
“This went on for 20 minutes. Then he comes out on the porch and says, ‘Very funny, guys.’
“And we say, ‘It wasn’t us, you have a new friend.’
“Kay was in bed because she wasn’t feeling well and the next morning she was really upset because the owl kept her up all night, hooting for Con.
“We talked about his cartoons a lot because I’m a Republican. I did Willie Nelson when he did Nixon with his hands up in a V. When Reagan was shot, I said, ‘Con, for Christ sake, do something, nice for the Gipper.’
“So he does a cartoon of Reagan in the hospital, all bandaged up. There are football players surrounding him saying, ‘Let’s win one for the Gipper.’ But the players’ jerseys read, Big Business, Big Oil, Defense Industry….
“Every time I’d give him an idea, he’d twist it around.
“He was a great piano player but only played in the key of C. I play guitar and I only play in the key of C, too. Maybe it’s because we’re both self taught. We made a gut bucket of out of a water pail and a broom stick and did a lot of sing-a-longs. He had a Steinway at his house.
“I built a golf course at the ranch. It was pretty rough, but we played a lot there and at the Palos Verdes and Los Verdes clubs. A few weeks ago, he tripped over his dog and cracked a vertebrae. I went to see him in the hospital and his son David was there. He said, ‘Bo, I’m glad you’re here. He won’t talk, not even to the doctors and nurses. You have to get him to talk.
“He’s sleeping on his back, his mouth and eyes wide open. I said, ‘Con, you’d do anything to avoid playing golf with me and I need the money. So get out of bed. We’re going to play golf.
“He said, ‘F you, Asshole.’ That was his nickname for me.”
Community activist
Barbara and George Gleghorn were longtime neighbors of the Conrads.
“I got to know Kay through the League of Women Voters. When they moved into our neighborhood from the Mesa, we invited the family over for dinner to welcome them. Our kids started walking to school together and we were like one family.
“When men were deemed eligible to join the League of Women Voters Paul joined and became very supportive.
“Kay was on the League board during the incorporation of Rancho Palos Verdes and the Save Our Coastline effort.
“Kay would put a bug in Paul’s ear and he would do cartoons for us and get them printed in the Times.
One of the cartoons shows a plein air artist seated at his easel, looking out to sea through a chain linked fence. It’s titled “California landscape.” Another cartoon from this era shows Don Quixote charging a raging bulldozer.
“We’d sell his cartoons at our fundraisers. When the libraries lost money because of Prop. 13, Paul designed the Library 10K T-shirt. The shirt had Howard Jarvis’s on the front side, and Jarvis’ rear on the back.
An ordinary guy
Bob and Dorothy Courtney met the Conrads at a Palos Verdes High track meet. The Courtney’s son Jake was running for Mira Costa. Conrad’s daughter Libby was running for Palos Verdes. The couples were sitting in the same row. They became close friends after Dorothy and Kay Conrad were appointed to the Little Company of Mary Board of Trustees.
“Bob and Paul became friends because all the other hospital trustee spouses were women. During the early 1980s, 90 percent of hospital trustees were men,” Dorothy Courtney recalled.
When Dorothy became executive director of the Richstone Family Center in Hawthorne she enlisted the Conrads to host one of her first fundraisers.
Conrad subsequently drew caricatures of the honorees for the programs of Richstone Center’s annual fundraisers. Honorees included Times sports columnist Jim Murray, Dodger announcer Vin Scully, golfer Arnold Palmer, auto racer Mario Andretti and jockey Chris McCarron.
“The caricatures were always black and white, except Scully’s. He made Scully’s hair red. He’d work on them. They had to be good,” Bob Courtney said.
“We played golf all the time. He was a terrible golfer. But one time in the desert, he shot a 79. It was one of those days, everything he did was unbelievable. Usually he shot around 100.
“No one was neutral about him. We’d have him at parties and people would ask, ‘Why’s he here?’
“One night we were invited to dinner at Paul’s home. There were just three couples and Cardinal Mahoney. I said to Paul, ‘I thought the Cardinal didn’t like you.’ He said, ‘No, no, we have a great time together.’
“I represented him on a DUI. I felt I had to defend him because he was stopped after leaving our office Christmas party. He said, ‘I did it, I shouldn’t have been driving. Don’t do anything special. I want to plead guilty. I’ll do what everyone else has to do.’
“He drew a cartoon of himself in jail. It said, “If it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough for Casper Weinberger.’ I have it hanging in my office.”
Local artist
Jody Wiggins is an abstract artist who worked with Conrad at the Palos Verdes Art Center.
“I met Paul about eight years ago. I was a newcomer and it was his day to staff the gallery. All the members have to staff one day a month. He said I was a breath of fresh air and began critiquing my work, which helped me a lot.
“He was really good for the gallery because he was so famous. I’d set up lectures for him and there would be standing room only. He’d tell stories about Nixon and always end them with his big laugh.
“He treated everyone with respect, unless they were pompous. Then, they’d get an earful.
“He loved Kay. I’d run into him at Bristol Farms where he’d pick up dinner after she had her stroke. And he loved the cakes at the farmers market, especially the lemon cake.
“I watched him work in his home studio on the elephant for his Obama sculptor. Obama was underneath the elephant, ‘getting a breath of fresh air.’ He finished it in time for our “Mind’s Eye” show at the Artists’ Studio Gallery in May. It was his last sculpture.
“I went by his house last week with a butternut rum cake, but he was sleeping. I told Kay not to wake him. I’d see him next week.
“I had Paul scheduled to do a demonstration for the Artists’ Open Group at the Art Center on the 27th.”
Dad
At Conrad’s funeral Mass at St. John Fisher on Saturday, September 11, former Times columnist Robert Scheer said, “There has been no greater figure in American journalism than Paul Conrad.” He described Conrad as “the standard bearer of the Los Angeles Times.”
Philadelphia Inquirer Pulitzer Prize winning editorial Cartoonist Tony Auth recalled Conrad as a man who spoke truth to power. He recalled being invited with Conrad and other editorial cartoonists to the George H.W. Bush White House for lunch.
“The president wanted to talk sports and the conversation somehow turned to beach balls.
“Speaking of beach balls,” Conrad boomed from the far end of the table, “how is Vice President Dan Quayle doing?’
Conrad’s oldest son Jamie began his eulogy by reminding the mourners that “Paul Conrad was also a family man, a husband and a father.
“The first time I realized he was famous was when I was five and a new babysitter came to the house. Our parents’ car was barely out of the driveway when she asked, ‘So, what’s it like having a famous father.’
‘I remember thinking he was the only father I’d had, so I had nothing to compare him to. But I thought he was just like any other father. He read to us in bed, taught us how to throw and catch, coached our baseball, softball and soccer teams and helped with school projects. He got an A for his plaster of Paris model of California.
“Sometimes, he did things a little bigger than other dads. When we needed a sponsor for out Little League team, instead of calling the local gas station, he called the president of Union Oil, [Fred Hartley, who was also a Peninsula resident], though that didn’t stop him from attacking the man a few years later. [The Los Angeles Times story on Conrad’s death reported that in 1974 Hartley sued the Times for libel after it printed a Conrad cartoon of a bare Christmas tree, with a single Union 76 Christmas ball and the caption, “Merry Christmas from Fred Heartless.” “The oil chief had previously had an amiable acquaintance with Conrad, even donating $200 to a Little League team the cartoonist coached,” the Times reported.]
“Dad never lost his connection to the ordinary person. He never thought of himself as a celebrity. He greeted everyone, from the security guard to the publisher, by name, even if it wasn’t always the right name.
“When he was given a forum he spoke for us because he was one of us.”
David Conrad acknowledged his dad’s notoriety presented some challenges.
“People wanted to know about the man – did he smoke pot, was he a Commie? After growing up with him, I had to learn how much profanity is allowable.
“We did metal work together, including work on the cross behind me. At the dinner table, he’d run his cartoons by our mom. His passion and her analytical skills made them a great team.
“He told me that being an editorial cartoonist is like standing naked before the world, everyday.” Pen
