(& FOUND) 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.”

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.”