David Charles Gerard (1909-2003) was an American cartoonist and creator of the comic strip Will-Yum and others.
Dave Gerard lived and worked most of his life in his home town of Crawfordsville, Indiana. Born there on June 18, 1909, Gerard graduated from local Wabash College in 1931 and that year his first cartoon appeared in Judge . After a few brief years in New York City during the Depression, he made his way back to Crawfordsville around 1934. Gerard's early career was spent largely as a magazine gag cartoonist and advertising illustrator. During the 1940s and 1950s, his cartoons appeared widely in national publications, including Collier's and the Saturday Evening Post .
In 1953, Gerard signed a contract with the National Newspaper Syndicate to produce a panel strip, Viewpoint (1949-1953). Probably his best known work, the newspaper strip Will-Yum began to appear in 1953 and ran through 1967 and was also published in England, Denmark, Australia and Finland. (Dell Publications issued a comic book adaptation of the strip from 1956-1958). Gerard took inspiration from his own children and the children of neighbors and others he knew. Gerard continued to create new strips for the remainder of his career, producing the daily comic strip City Hall for the National Newspaper Syndicate (1967-1984), and Citizen Smith for the Register and Tribune Syndicate (1967-1984).
Gerard's regional identity was an important aspect of his work and is reflected in his affiliation with the Sugar Crick Art School-a loose grouping of Crawfordsville-area artists that included the famous cartoonist Bill Holman. Gerard was also civically active, serving on the Crawfordsville city council and also as mayor from 1972 to 1975. Dave Gerard semi-retired in 1984 and died on August 31, 2003.
From the guide to the Dave Gerard Cartoons., 1949-1968, (Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries)
