Mel Keefer obit

Mel Keefer – RIP

 

He was not on the list.

A native Angeleno, Mel was born to Ida and Charles Keefer, later becoming big brother to Phyllis. His West Adams childhood revolved around two passions: sports and art. He excelled in track and field and loved football. Mel possessed a precocious gift for drawing realistically, so much so that Norman Rockwell penned a complimentary letter to Mel after seeing one of his sketches.

Immediately upon graduating Los Angeles High School., Mel enlisted in the Navy. He served two years before returning to Los Angeles to attend classes at Art Center and Chouinard on the G.I. Bill. But he most credited a Santa Monica school run by cartoonist Jefferson Machamer for forging his future.

Mel’s art career was stellar. He drew for dozens of syndicated comic strips and illustrated hundreds of books, news stories and animated cartoons. In 2007, Mel was awarded the Comic-Con Lifetime Achievement Inkpot Award. Perhaps Mel’s most noteworthy contribution to the art and sports world was Mac Divot, a syndicated daily comic strip that ran in 150 newspapers for over 20 years. For that, Mel was inducted into the Southern California Sports Hall of Fame in 2014.

Born in Los Angeles, California, Keefer trained as an illustrator at the Santa Monica School of Art run by Jefferson Machamer and the ArtCenter College of Design. He made his debut as a comics artist drawing Perry Mason for King Features Syndicate. He is best known for the long-running golf-themed series Mac Divot, which he created together with Jordan Lanski for the Chicago Tribune Syndicate and which ran for twenty years starting from 1955. Other comic strips Keefer has worked in include Thorne McBride (1960–1963), Rick O'Shay (which he drew between 1978 and 1981) and the comic versions of Dragnet and Gene Autry.

Besides his activity as a cartoonist, Keefer also worked as an illustrator for books, magazines and other publications. He authored the artwork of the Richard Quine's film How to Murder Your Wife. In 2007, Keefer was awarded a lifetime Inkpot Award for his career.