posted Tuesday, March 02, 2010 ~ Ed Folsom added 2/24 ~  Jack Horgan added 2/28

Lew Hymers, Reno Caricaturist Extraordinaire

Here's a few pages about a guy we should all know of...

a bit of narrative about the man follows the two images below, the cover and title page of his book "Seen About Town"

I've left some images of individual pages of the book fairly large, so you'll find a navigation click to take you to each following page

About the book: The original book is 8 x 9½ inch clothbound, with about 314 pages and darn little text. Hymers dedicates the book "...This volume of cartoons and caricatures is dedicated to the memory of Graham Sanford, for many years editor of the Reno Evening Gazette and a long-time friend." With only a couple of exceptions that I could find, the pages contained no fewer than eight subjects, with many pages containing 12 or more subjects (I did note a few persons included two or more times, owing to one inclusion as a businessperson and a second or third as a public official, legislator, councilman, or military member) Few women were included, one most notably was schoolteacher Libby C. Booth, some say the first lady school principal in Reno. I include on this website the two men I found in the book who are indeed still among us, attorney/war hero Jack Streeter and insurance man Louie Capurro. If there are others advise me and they'll be added Here we go, posted 2/24: Ed Folsom, depicted as a Naval Aviator - I knew him running the Reno Garage and dad to my friends Joanie Buonamici and Darla Potter. Welcome aboard, Ed! Feb. 28: And another: I see him at Simon's every Friday but just found him in the book: Jack Horgan - Commercial Hardware!

To enjoy some pages of the original book, click on Hymers' rendition of either Chet or Link below!

About the man: Lew Hymers, born in Reno in 1892, was a local caricaturist for many years prior to World War II (in his drawings you'll note that many of the subjects are viewed in their wartime uniforms and rank attributions.)

Hymers has been expertly researched and documented in informative material on the Web and at the Nevada Historical Society, in pieces attributed to Guy Rocha, Phillip Earl, some NHS clips and a column I wrote a decade ago. Now joining the 21st Century I'm going to take the easy way out and utilize the power of the internet, and offer to the reader of this website a click to one of the better and most concise single stories of Lew Hymers, written by my old friend Jim McCormick (he's now Emeritus at UNR; I had him as an art instructor in his first year teaching there, so we do go back a ways!) He assembled the reprinting of Seen About Town, now available About Town, for Black Rock Press, and I highly recommend it for a reader's own use or a gift. While few (only two I could find, but there's surely others) people in the book are now alive, we see many old local "celebrities" and parents of our contemporaries.

For Jim McCormick's authoritative scoop on Lew Hymers, I recommend to you:

http://www.onlinenevada.org/lew_hymers

(you'll need your back-button on your web browser to return to this page)