LOST ART

“It was a big shock,” Jacobson says. “I was in my 20s then so those drawings are close to 70 years old.”

“It was plugged into the comments section of some newspaper he was looking at,” recalls Bob’s son, Erik. “He looked at the images and said, ‘Those are mine.’ And so he had me sign him up on Twitter (@JacobsonRobertJ) so he could contact the poster and ask him about it.”

(& FOUND)

Drawn in the late 1940s and ’50s, these “Sportoons” had been given new life in the digital age thanks to nostalgic collector Doug Shivers (@casdas29) and his like-minded followers, who appreciate vintage Cowboy content.

“I came up with that term — Sportoons — but didn’t come up with the idea of doing that kind of drawing,” Jacobson explains. “At that time there were a few guys who would make a drawing of an athlete and then add these little cartoons sprinkled around with extra information, and they were syndicated nationally. I had seen them and admired them. I guess I did some and showed them to (former OAMC sports information director) Otis Wile He liked them enough, and I did a fair number of them for him.”

Shivers’ social media account often features OSU memorabilia from bygone eras, but the serendipitous story that follows this particular post is unique.

“As old as the original cartoons were, in no way did I anticipate that one of the artists who drew them would ever know I tweeted them, much less respond to my tweet,” Shivers says. “But cool things happen on the Internet sometimes.

“When I got a reply from Bob saying he was surprised to see some of his drawings, I have to think that his level of surprise wasn't even close to mine.”

“We were both stunned that the connection was made,” Jacobson says. “It’s kind of a really weird circumstance, but it makes life interesting to have those things pop up like that.

“I don’t remember exactly what our conversation was, but somewhere along the way I began to wonder whether I could still do that stuff. I thought, ‘Well, I’m not full-time employed right now. I’ve got the time to try.’”

So at age 91, “Jake” (as he often signed his creations) went back to his drawing table.

Drawn In

Artistic endeavors have always been a part of Jacobson’s life.

“When you’re a kid, you just do what you do, and I started doodling around. I was attracted to various illustrations I’d seen in magazines and got hung up on comic books for a while.”

As a boy growing up in the 1930s in Shelby, Montana, he found a world of adventure via comics and the emergence of animated pictures. Jacobson would spend hours sketching with pencil and paper trying to replicate the characters he loved, honing his own illustration skills all the while.

“I’m surprised to see Superman and some of those early superheroes are surviving in great shape so many years later,” he says, recalling his favorite characters. “Of course, Flash Gordon … what I liked about that one as much as anything was that fella, Alex Raymond — he was one heck of an artist. I always admired him. I liked the Disney things, too.

“You know, after a while you practice and you find pretty soon you can draw Popeye’s face without looking at anything. You’re not so original at first — you just copy stuff and see if you can make it look the same. It’s not the worst thing in the world, and I’m saying that from an art instructor’s view. I used to teach illustration. Go and copy somebody because in the long run you can’t copy them anyway. Your own style is going to show up no matter what, which is great, but it gets you started and gives you a foundation. You can lean on the other guys’ expertise.”

Jacobson’s own graphic style and personality began to come out in college publications like the Daily O’Collegian and the satirical Aggievator

“I tell my kids, it’s amazing how badly you could do that stuff — and I did a lot of bad stuff — but I didn’t know how bad it was so I kept on doing it. And if you keep doing it, why eventually you get better at it.”

On The Move

In 1943, before his senior year of high school, Jacobson’s family moved to Hamilton, nestled in Montana’s scenic Bitterroot Valley.

“That was quite a change,” he says. “I’m not gonna knock Shelby or anything — it’s just a small town that was there primarily because there was a railroad going through — but it was a lot of empty prairie, I’ll tell you that. I thought the Hamilton area was heaven compared to Shelby. Lots of mountains and fishing.”

He graduated in 1944 just as Allied forces were beginning to turn the tide in the Second World War.

“I went into the Army Air Corps, as it was called back then, pretty late in the war. When World War II ended in 1945, they didn’t need guys like me anymore so I got out early.

“I met a guy in the Army named Bill Hardwick and we just decided we’d go to college together. No one in my family had ever gone to college before so I didn’t really know what to look for. Bill’s dad was stationed at Ft. Sill for a while, and he had been to Oklahoma quite a bit so we finally ended up down there at Oklahoma A&M. It was great, and I enjoyed my time there a lot.”

Jacobson recalls being an Aggie basketball fan in Henry Iba’s heyday.

“I had no idea before I went to the school what a powerhouse they had been, and were still, in college basketball. To go there and hear about their two national championship teams and so forth was amazing. When I started going to the games I was so impressed with the skill level of those guys. We had great times because basketball was so good back then. And we hope it will be again with any luck here now.

“Back in those days you could just walk into the fieldhouse and shoot baskets. All you needed was a basketball. I remember I was out there one time, and I made about four jump shots in a row, which can happen to anybody if you shoot enough. Otis saw me and hollered, ‘Mr. Iba, you gotta come see this guy!’ and I thought, ‘Good God, I hope he doesn’t show up.’”

Poking Fun

“I was looking through some Aggievators that we saved, and I was surprised to see that one year I was on the art staff, the next year I was the associate editor and the next year I was the editor. I spent more time with those people than I realized.”

The irreverent publication was printed on the same press as the O’Collegian Jacobson says, but unlike the student newspaper, there was little supervision.

“The adviser for the O’Colly was the same guy that I dealt with. His instructions for me were, ‘Here’s the key to your office,’ and that’s all I knew. So I really had no guidance and we did some things I’m not too proud of, but some things turned out pretty well. But we had to learn on the run.

“There were a number of these humor magazines in colleges at that time, and some were really good. We would steal jokes from each other, and that became kind of underground sometimes … always a question of taste and so forth.”

All Aggievator jokes had to be approved by Clement Trout , head of the OAMC publications department.

That didn’t always happen.

“I have to admit there were times we would put jokes in that he hadn’t seen because I thought he would never let that go by. One time I looked at the jokes we had available and thought, ‘Boy these are pretty lame,’ so I borrowed something from another publication that might be just a little bit off-color. You wouldn’t think it was off-color in today’s world, but anyway … Eventually I heard about this threat that they were gonna throw me out of school! After that I’m sure all the jokes were submitted. We didn’t like to break the law too much.”

Designs On Love

As Jacobson pursued a bachelor’s degree in fine arts, he was tapped to teach classes on campus by art department head Doel Reed. It was there he met the love of his life, Jeanne Rollier

“One of the classes I taught was for home economics students,” he says. “Every six weeks I would get about 20 or 30 new students who would come in and do something basic with a color chart, learn how to mix colors and what the primary and secondaries were, tonal values … Jeanne was in one of my classes, and well of course I noticed her right away. At one point I asked her if she would like to be our Aggievator girl of the month, and she said, ‘I guess so.’ She didn’t know what it was.

“I couldn’t ask her out as a date because I was her instructor, but as soon as she was finished with that section of the class we got together pretty fast. I met her in the fall, and we were engaged by New Year’s.”

Jacobson and the Lamont, Okla. native (Rollier’s parents owned the movie theater in the Grant County town of less than 600) wed in 1950. They were married nearly 64 years until Jeanne’s passing in 2014.

“She was smart, beautiful, kind, fiercely loyal and a wonderful mother,” he says.

“She was my best friend. Deep down I feel like the main reason I attended Oklahoma A&M was to meet her. She was the love of my life, and I miss her dearly.”

Drawn Together

Jacobson continued to draw for Wile and the O’Colly and worked to establish his own freelance illustration business while finishing up his degree. “Anything to earn a buck at that time,” he says.

“I wasn’t a hanger-outer because I was always looking for work. My GI Bill was good for only two-and-a-half years. I had my own silkscreen shop with a partner, Dick Gilpin where we mostly produced posters and signs. We also made the set backgrounds for the drama department and decorations for the fieldhouse dances.”

In those days, Stillwater was a popular stop on the big band circuit. Jacobson recalls seeing some of the biggest names in music play to enthusiastic audiences at Gallagher Hall.

“ Woody Herman was there … Spike Jones and his City Slickers came. That was a crazy outfit, and we really enjoyed it. Matter of fact, we got pictures of those guys looking at a copy of the Aggievator. So I guess I must have corralled them some way and gotten some publicity for it.”

Bandleader Tommy Dorsey was one of Jacobson’s favorites.

“We had a contract to decorate the fieldhouse for a prom he was playing,” he adds. “We got streamers and attached them to the scoreboard. I don’t know how we got them up there, but I do know that I was exhausted and Jeanne was exhausted. Still, Tommy Dorsey was so good that we danced every dance — you just couldn’t not dance, no matter how tired you were. But the streamers kept coming down, and the next thing you know you’re having to duck them because they stretched in the heat. Somehow I got upstairs and walked along some iffy-looking place and found a crank and cranked the scoreboard back up to raise those streamers so we wouldn’t all get hooked on them. It was kind of fun.”

Jacobson says meeting Gilpin was one of the best things that ever happened to him.

“He was a fantastically gifted illustrator and designer and an even better person. Later on, after graduation, we teamed up to run our own commercial art studio — Graphic Art Center — in Oklahoma City.”

Within five years, Jacobson says their six-person studio became the largest freelance commercial art studio in the state of Oklahoma.

“We had kids come through from the various schools looking for work,” Jacobson recalls. “We would look at the portfolios, and some of the kids were really talented but none of them had a clue about what commercial art was about. You know, it’s marketing. And certain requirements are there. It’s not the same skills as being a fine artist. The main difference is, if you’re painting and someone wants to buy ing or an illustration, then you’re a commer

Gilpin and Jacobson worked together for about 10 years.

“He was a great partner. Dick was an outstanding layout artist and designer. You could see it from the start.”

(Editor’s note: Gilpin, a native of Garber, Okla., would go on to illustrate a number of iconic program covers and publications for Oklahoma State in the ’70s and ’80s. He passed away in 1989.)

In 1963, Jacobson was hired to start a commercial art program at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. On the side, he freelanced as a book designer and created motivational posters for schools and libraries — an endeavor that eventually became his full-time job under the business name RJ Design.

“What I really wanted as a kid was to be a comic strip artist. That seemed like the place to be. I actually tried two or three different strips and couldn’t get anybody interested in them. But when I finally got into this poster business, they were basically cartoons. I didn’t get to be a comic strip artist, but I wasn’t married to the strip either. I was lucky. I got to do kind of what I wanted to do and didn’t have to ask anybody but myself. If they didn’t like it then they wouldn’t buy it … but they did. Jeanne ran the office and so forth. She was a big part of it.”

Jacobson sold RJ Design to his daughter and son-in-law and retired from illustration in 2000 but continued to dabble from time to time.

“What a blessing to have this to do as a hobby because I’m an old man now, and I feel very grateful to have something to do. Right now I am working on a new book that requires a number of pen and ink illustrations and having a lot of fun with it. I’m very lucky. Sometimes I wonder why I am so fortunate.”

Back To The Drawing Board

Jacobson’s productivity waned in recent years, but his serendipitous social media interaction with Shivers provided much-needed motivation.

Why not try to draw a new OSU Sportoon?

“He spent a lot of time trying to figure out who to draw,” his son Erik says. “It just became more and more logical to do Mike Gundy because Dad is a big admirer of not just his teams but his coaching methods and the way he looks after his players. So it was a labor of love to pour himself into honoring that.”

“Erik and I looked up photographs of Coach Gundy online, and I thought this particular one with the headphones kind of looked different from the rest and was a little more lively and so forth. So that was my reference.

“I think the thing that surprised me a little bit was the fact that, as an old man, my hand doesn’t shake. My eyes water badly, and sometimes I’ve got paint on the brush and I’m about ready to put it down, and now I can’t see the paper because my eyes are all teared up so I’d have to take off my glasses, wipe my eyes ... but it wasn’t too bad. I was a little worried about the likeness, but I think that came out okay.”

“This all happened in mid-winter and when we started on the project to do the Gundy thing, Dad got really sick. In fact, it was kind of dicey there for a while,” Erik admits. “But what kept him going — and he said this several times — was the painting. He’d say, ‘I want to see how this turns out.’ He was sick as a dog in there, standing and drawing and painting … It seemed like what kept him going and what got him through that particular health crisis was that painting.”

Last May, Shivers presented the finished framed Sportoon and original acrylic painting to Gundy in his Boone Pickens Stadium office.

“Wow,” Gundy said upon seeing the art for the first time. “Pretty dang good. The amount of detail is incredible.”

The artwork now hangs on Gundy’s wall, where it has become a conversation piece, along with a vintage game program Jacobson illustrated in 1954.

“Everyone wants to know where I got it. There have been a few people who said they’d like to have it.

“It’s great to see someone doing what they love,” Gundy adds. “And to still be on top of their craft like that, it’s really impressive.”

“The whole thing was kind of wild and weird,” Jacobson says. “Luckily I didn’t spill too many splotches of paint in the wrong places on it and screw it up too badly. It finally ended up in Gundy’s hands, which is pretty bizarre, really.

“Life’s funny.”

Like a Sportoon.

For more info, contact Alexa Able: 405-744-4349 / oclub@okstate.edu okstate.com/oclub

The action came sudden and swift.

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