Chip Bok says Goodbye with cartoon

Chip Bok’s final cartoon in the Beacon Journal was printed Sunday. Next to it was the regular column of editorial page editor Michael Douglas who devoted the last section to Bok who has been the editorial cartoonist for 22 years.

The cartoon shows Bok standing on a window ledge of the third floor of the BJ holding an inside-out umbrella and saying “What do you think of my golden parachute?” The headline on the BJ tower reads “Bok bolts.” Standing on the street below are the movers and shakers of Akron answering Bok’s question by shouting Jump! Jump! Familiar caricatures include Council President Marco Sommerville toting a handgun on the left and deputy mayor Dave Lieberth on the right.

Here is Douglas’ tribute in full:

The newspaper industry certainly knows innovation and change, and the upheaval that results. The Akron Beacon Journal and other papers have been confronting a collapsing revenue model, not to mention changing lifestyles. That has meant searching for ways to save money, or put another way, saying goodbye to colleagues.

Chip Bok, our editorial cartoonist for the past 22 years, spent his last day at the paper on Friday. Most know Chip through his cartoons – clever, biting, infuriating, outrageous. He has brought national attention to the paper, through his many awards, his cartoons appearing elsewhere via syndication.

No surprise that Chip and I differ on many issues. We’ve had a continuing argument for two decades. That has been such a valuable part of his presence at the paper, challenging our thinking, prodding us to look differently at a matter, and doing so in an engaging, even charming, way, a winning variation on The Godfather lesson: It’s strictly business, nothing personal.

Yet it is personal. Heated as the clashes may be, there remains an abiding respect, a nagging impulse (albeit often readily repressed) that I may be wrong. That’s right, a cartoonist at his best, ever dishing out humility.