Summer 2003

The cat's meow
Garfield stumps for 4-H in creator Jim Davis’ latest campaign to promote youth, education and the environment
By Olivia Maddox

Cartoonist Jim Davis showed cattle at the Grant County 4-H Fair as a member of the Lake Galatia 4-H Club, which his father founded in 1952. (Photo Paws Inc.)

State Road 26 is a two-lane blacktop that runs east to west across the breadth of central Indiana, threading the small towns in its path together like beads on a string. Though many are just tiny dots on the map, welcome signs at town limits boast with hometown pride their claims to fame—a state high school football championship, a summer festival, the site of a frontier settlement during the days when Indiana was a part of the Northwest Territory.

As the highway clips the edge of Fairmount—population 3,100—on its way through Grant County, one of these signs pays homage to the town’s favorite sons: ’50s Hollywood rebel James Dean and Jim ‘Garfield’ Davis.

Davis’ middle name isn’t Garfield, but he does share a namesake with the orange-and-black cartoon cat that he created 25 years ago. Both are named after Davis’ grandfather, James Garfield Davis, whom Davis credits with helping to inspire the comic strip character. Other than signifying the boyhood home of Davis, the sign (which features Garfield’s image rather than Davis’) confirms the close link between the 57-year-old cartoonist and the lasagna-eating, nap-loving feline that has developed a worldwide following of adults and children alike.

Davis works behind the scenes while Garfield basks in the limelight of a business empire—appropriately named Paws—that includes the most widely syndicated Sunday comic in the United States, dozens of best-selling books, an animated television series and Emmy Award-winning prime-time specials and a plethora of merchandise sold in more than 100 countries. Davis gives generously of his time and money and Garfield’s image to support worthy causes with those that involve youth, education and the environment most dear to his heart.

One organization that meets all three criteria is 4-H—a fact that Davis knows well. Raised on a farm, Davis was a member of 4-H from the time he was 10 years old until he went to college. “4-H takes me back to a very important time in my life,” Davis says. Typical of farm kids in the 1950s, he showed cattle and competed in corn and forestry, among other projects.

Though Davis was successful in the show ring (his heifer was named grand champion at the county fair in 1955), he says the experience was more important than the winning, and the lessons he learned still stick with him today.

The partnership between 4-H and Paws began in 2001 with an introduction and a handshake between Davis and Edwin M. Gershon, senior vice president of licensing and merchandising for National 4-H Council, at the Licensing Industry Merchandiser’s Association trade show in New York. Spurred by the approach of 4-H’s centennial anniversary, Gershon was presenting 4-H as licensee/licensor. Davis was representing Paws, which already enjoys a lucrative 550 licensees for thousands of Garfield products sold all over the world.

Gershon approached the award-winning cartoonist with the knowledge that Davis was a 4-H alumnus. (Davis and his brother “Doc” were members of the Lake Galatia 4-H Club, which ironically was started by their father, Jim Sr., in 1952.) “Jim was giving a presentation which I attended, and afterward I walked up and introduced myself,” says Gershon from his office at the National 4-H Council in Chevy Chase, Md. “He was thrilled that we (4-H) came. He introduced me to the other people on his staff and told me how many years (of involvement) each had with 4-H.” Gershon says that about 80 percent of the 57-member Paws staff has 4-H involvement, either through their children or as former members themselves.

This impromptu meeting ultimately produced a licensing agreement for Garfield 4-H merchandise to be sold through the National 4-H Supply Service catalog and Web site and—the piéce de résistance—a signed, limited edition Garfield print commemorating the 4-H centennial as a fund-raiser to benefit the Council and state 4-H foundations. Titled “Celebrating 100 years of 4-H 1902-2002,” the print depicts Garfield in four different frames reciting the 4-H pledge.

To add a distinctive twist to the tribute, Gershon devised a plan to put the 53 prints up for bid on e-bay, the popular Internet auction site, selling one print a week for a year. Each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Pacific and Caribbean islands were denoted to benefit from the sale of a print during a designated week. The selling price for that week was split equally between the Council and the representative 4-H foundation.

 
 
© 2003 Purdue University College of Agriculture