Dick Wright was an editorial cartoonist for 30 years.
In 2005 he gave up political cartooning for a higher calling – church pastor.
David Astor reported in Editor & Publisher 2005:
[Dick] Wright worked for the Union-Tribune, too (starting in 1976) and later joined The Providence (R.I.) Journal, the Nashville (Tenn.) Banner, and The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch. Currently, he’s affiliated with the Gwinnett Daily Post of Lawrenceville, Ga.
Longtime editorial cartoonist Dick Wright is leaving the newspaper world Dec. 31 to concentrate on his duties as pastor of a Warrenton, Va., church.
While he’ll no longer be a professional cartoonist, Wright said he may do some drawings for church publications.
Now the conservative Virginia resident can no longer be silent while liberal Democrats run his state:
I have been retired from drawing cartoons for fifteen years. However, since the election of Governor Northam, and the democrats taking both chambers of the legislature in Virginia, I have been motivated to draw cartoons again that are opposed to the new socialist agenda of the Democrats. I have drawn my first cartoon and I invite you to share it, and the others that are coming, so that people see them and are inspired and motivated by them.
So, after 15 years Dick has come back to the game.
Mike Rhode has interviewed Dick about his return.
I began to consider changing my career goal from engineering to cartooning. I spent about two years contacting newspapers looking for a job. Finally, I was hired at the San Diego Union as their back-up cartoonist and illustrator and I was on my way. It didn’t take long for my editorial cartoons to be used more and more and I became the lead cartoonist. I was in San Diego for about eighteen months and then moved to the Providence Journal and that is where my career took off. I was focused on being as good as I could be. I would get up at about four in the morning and read the paper cover to cover. My intent was to know what was going on so my cartoons had substance. I worked at it. I became syndicated and my list of papers grew to about 420.
Dick’s political cartoons can be read at his Facebook page where, though the cartoons stand on their own, he adds a paragraph of editorial annotation to each drawing.