Except for a small number which will be individually designated as exceptions when they appear, all of the cartoons in the present work are part of Fred Waring’s personal collection of cartoons accumulated over a lifetime as personal gifts of friendship from their actual American cartoonist authors. Waring then re-gifted and passed them on by will upon his death in 1984 to his alma mater in State College, Pennsylvania, PSU, Pennsylvania State University. In November, 2018, the collection was housed in the Pattee and Paterno Library, right on campus, as part of a larger collection of memorabilia from his life, including golf clubs, photographs, tapes, records, movie reels, etc., all of it recording his career as music entertainer, and his private loves, likes and favorite things, the entire collection being named The Fred Waring’s America Collection, maybe because it is full of what could only be called Americana. Not very often in earth's human history has a middle-class kid from a mountain farm town in the middle of nowhere come to achieve such glorious success, wealth and fame, living like a King, and even Kingmaker. If only for this reason, the Collection is an important part of American history, for it helps document some of the phenomena commonly thought to make the U.S. of America 'great'; special; and one-of-a-kind: including its remarkable upward social mobility at times.

In November, 2018, the cartoons were accessible to people not associated with PSU in any way (not student, alumnus, administration, employee, or local town person, etc.). Dr. Lorenzo therefore was able, in several hours’ time, with the devoted help of quick-footed student librarians, to photograph (using an iphone 6) dozens of cartoons in the collection. Most were drawn or colored on large sheets of paper and held in groups of ten or twenty per folder, the folders organized roughly alphabetically. A few were on cardboard, and at least one was painted on wood. The backdrop the Dr. used for photographing was the wood grain upper surface of a library table in the Special Collections area.

Two of the cartoons (as will be indicated, when they are shown) were actually painted and glazed onto tabletops, and these entire tables had been given Waring by the cartoonists (Goldberg and Devlin). For years they were used on a daily basis at his Shawnee Inn and Golf Course in Shawnee-on-Delaware, Pennsylvania, as actual little tables. Today these two colorful cartoon-painted tables are in the room of the library where Dr. Lorenzo photographed the other cartoons, and so were easily photographed as well, as real tabletops, sitting and lacquered upon real but small soda-fountain-type tables, just big enough for four people to barely fit around to lick ice cream cones, which was perhaps their use at the Inn.

Dr. Lorenzo sent a pertinent memo to the editorial staff of the present work just before its publication, which reads in part:

I would like to point out that some of the cartoons are, in my opinion, significant works of art because of the psychological depth with which they address their recipient, Mr. Waring. Evaluation of their artistic worth in purely artistic terms I will leave to those more qualified, but it seems to me that a few are impressive in this respect too, even down to quoting or mimicking the great European art masters at times.

Also, I want to mention the impact that the life stories of the cartoonists had on me personally. When I went to the internet to read about individual cartoonists who turned up in the more or less random selection of cartoons I photographed, I was struck by the dedication and brilliant talent of many. Whatever ill may be said of Waring, he certainly had some stellar friends in the cartoonists, and they seemed to love and respect him greatly, for the most part. Many were men of character who served during World War II, or if not by active military service, helped the war effort by cartooning for the Army, Air Force, etc. Others designed war- or service-related cartoon characters and stories which became syndicated, either for daily and Sunday newspapers around the country, or for branches of the military. Some of Mr. Waring’s cartoonist friends have been recognized and honored significantly by their hometowns, one, for example (Milton Caniff – see cartoon below), being called on a historical monument the ‘Rembrandt of Comics’.

I suspect that over time some of the cartoonists whom we took for granted down through the twentieth century, when we threw their comics pages in the trash without thinking, will be recognized as having been significant contributors to, and shapers of, American culture, education and art. Already there has been a trend in the last few decades toward honoring them more and more by expanding some of their work into movies or television series of distinction (‘The Flash’ TV series, for example, not to mention movies about Superman, Superwoman, Wonder Woman, Spiderman, etc., etc.) Maybe Waring was ahead of the rest of us in appreciating the brilliant personal and artistic cleverness of the country’s cartoonists.