David Fitzsimmons Steps Away From Daily Grind

I’ve been essentially doing the same thing nearly daily for the past six decades.

I’ve been meeting cartooning deadlines since I was 13, on the staff of the “The Tumbleweed,” the Naylor Middle School yearbook. At Rincon High School, I drew for the “Rincon Echo,” then for the underground paper, the “Frumious Bandersnatch,” then the “Arizona Daily Wildcat” with side trips to “The Pretentious Idea” and the “Tombstone Epitaph.” 

After earning my degree in graphic design, it was the “Oklahoma City Times” and the “Daily Oklahoman,” then onto Chesapeake Bay to work for the “Virginian-Pilot/Ledger Star,” followed by the “Daily Press of Newport News.” At age 30, “The Arizona Daily Star” hired me, and after years of shameless begging I returned home, elated.

After a lifetime of drawing cartoons I have fallen in love with writing. I have fallen out of love with cartooning. After 11,000 cartoons, plus the tens of thousands of caricatures I have drawn over the years, I do not want to spend my remaining years manacled to a drawing board perpetually haunted by deadlines.

In my 66th year, my pen has grown as heavy as a boulder, and my cartoon deadlines have become a yoke. Thus I am gliding into blissful semi-retirement by reducing my output to one cartoon a week. And one column a week.