A special seed was planted when a third-grade buddy invited him to a Bible school event where a storyteller told the tale of the Good Samaritan. “He drew it while he talked,” Steve says. “I remember how that blew me away. I thought I’d gone to heaven.”
He developed a knack for drawing himself, but only took a single art class from Wayne Tollefson back in college. “I’m a cartoonist,” he says flatly. “I’m not an artist.” Yet he was already contributing cartoons – illustrations with a point, often a sharp one — to the college newspaper, the Spectrum.
After graduating from NDSU in 1972, Steve and Gwen moved to Two Harbors, Minn., where she taught high school and he got his foot in the door of the Lake Country News-Chronicle as an editorial cartoonist. After completing a master’s degree in communication arts at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, he became the newspaper’s editor. He continued submitting editorial cartoons to papers in northeastern Minnesota.
Steve also contributed to The Duluth News Tribune and The Hibbing Daily News in Minnesota.
[Steve moved] to Fargo with his family in 1980 … His work first appeared in The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead in 1989 and [had previously] also been published in the West Fargo Pioneer, Midweek, Grand Forks Herald.
Steve Stark was an early cartoonist while a student at NDSU on The Spectrum student newspaper in the 1970s.
Later, Steve began his editorial cartooning in earnest at the Lake County News Chronicle, a weekly newspaper in Two Harbors, Minn. While in Two Harbors he soon became publisher of that county newspaper.
There, on the North Shore of Lake Superior he also contributed cartoons to daily newspapers, The Hibbing Daily News, and The Duluth News Tribune.
When he and his wife moved back to Fargo a few years later, he started as an editorial cartoonist for The Forum on a regular basis.
In the F-M area he also contributed editorial cartoons to West Fargo publications as well as the Grand Forks Herald and others.
Now, after more than five decades, that cavalcade of cartoons is coming to a halt. Stark’s final editorial cartoon for The Forum is published Saturday, Oct. 22.
At age 72, the lingering effects of a stroke he suffered three years ago persuaded Stark that the time was right to retire from what has been his life’s passion.
“I’m voluntarily giving up on cartooning simply because I’m so tired,” he said. “They’re taking so much time to produce. It’s just hard for me. I think it’s just time for me to give it up, although I just adore it.”
We offer our sympathy to Steve’s family and friends.
