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World War I cartoons, unseen for 90 years, to be displayed at Butler
By GUY D’ASTOLFO
YOUNGSTOWN
In 1918, Pvt. John J. Grantonic Sr. of the Steubenville area was a doughboy — as U.S. soldiers were then known — serving in France during World War I.
Grantonic had a knack for cartooning. He would create cartoons that humorously depicted Army life and mail them to his parents in the states.
After the war, Grantonic returned to Ohio, where he married and raised a family. He died about 20 years ago.
His cartoons had been folded neatly and placed in a trunk, where they remained unseen for more than 90 years.
Until now.
The 15 pencil drawings will go on display Sunday at the Butler Institute of American Art as a Memorial Day exhibition that will run through July 8.
The cartoons were unearthed a couple of years ago by one of Grantonic’s sons, John Jr. of Youngstown.
He recognized their value as both art and history and brought them to Louis A. Zona, director of the Butler, about two months ago.
“They are like opening a time capsule,” said Zona.
The cartoons are in the style of popular newspaper comic strips of the time, like “Mutt and Jeff” and “The Katzenjammer Kids,” and they accurately portray the uniforms and weaponry of the day, as well as the style of humor.
They were drawn on the back of stationary provided by the YMCA to encourage the troops to write home, and bear the insignia of the American Expeditionary Forces.
The paper has gone brittle with age, but the drawings carefully have been mounted for the Butler exhibit, which will be on the museum’s second floor. The exhibit also will include explanatory material about World War I, as well as newspaper cartoons of the era from the Butler’s collection.
The 82-year-old Grantonic Jr. said his father did a lot of cartooning after the war, but only as a hobby.
“I knew my dad was an excellent cartoonist,” said Grantonic Jr. “‘Mutt and Jeff’ were his favorite, and he would draw murals of them on the back of wallpaper and paint them with watercolors.”
His father never took an art lesson. “It just came naturally to him,” said Grantonic Jr., who noted his father also liked to draw steam locomotives.
Grantonic Jr. wants everybody to see his father’s work.
“He was so talented, and the cartoons tell a story,” he said. “To put them away and hide them — I’m not that kind of a person. What good is having them if they are just left in storage?”
The elder Grantonic never worked as an artist. “He only had a fourth-grade education,” said Grantonic Jr. But he was outgoing and active in the community, serving on the Jefferson County Board of Elections and leading a Slovak music band that played at events during the summer.
Grantonic Jr. is a retired manager for Nationwide Insurance and has lived in Youngstown for about 50 years. He and his wife, Barbara, have seven children: three boys and four girls.