Sports cartoonist and sports artist Bob Southee has passed away.
Robert Charles (Bob) Southee
April 2, 1930 – February 11, 2022
From the obituary:
His father was involved with aviation from its early days and the family moved frequently, finally settling in Athens, Pennsylvania. It was there while in high school that Bob’s gift as an artist was noticed by The Evening Times in Sayre, which hired him as a local sports illustrator/cartoonist.
Personalities in Sports ran from October 22, 1948 to July 8, 1850.
Sportraits ran from July 29, 1950 to October 4, 1950
In October 1950 he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and a year later was stationed at Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia in the art department at Leatherneck Magazine.
In 1953, while still with the Corps, he began freelancing as an illustrator and designer for various publications including Baseball Magazine up until its final issue in 1957. His most memorable work was for Jay Publishing’s Big League Books, creating cover art for various professional sports organizations, most notably Major League Baseball yearbooks for many of the teams, including the Senators, Yankees, and Cardinals. This ended when the publisher was killed in a plane crash in 1965.
By that time, Bob was working for the U.S. government, first with the Graphics Branch at the Department of Agriculture in 1955, and later as Chief, Design & Graphics Division for the Department of Commerce in 1966.
