Bulletin of Remarkable Trees Vol. 3 No. 1
World's Greatest (Nature) Newspaper: The Morton Arboretum and Chicago Tribune
I hope I’m not the only one who just today learned that the call letters for WGN (local Chicagoland radio and TV stations) are an abbreviation of the Chicago Tribune’s one-time motto (and inspiration for the subtitle this week): World’s Greatest Newspaper!
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Morton Arboretum and Chicago Tribune have a long and often intertwined history. The Arboretum frequently hosted journalists and illustrators from the paper while the Tribune ran columns from Arboretum staff and sought out their horticultural expertise.
I found one particularly interesting example of this connection in Grandpa’s 1946 journal and contemporaneous letters. He describes meeting with cartoonists from the Tribune and the entire group attending a drawing class led by May Watts:
Picked up Walnuts on Pine Hill during noon hour. Spent most of the afternoon with a group of Cartoonists from the Tribune (Parrish, Orr, McCutcheon, etc) - Sept 25 1946
Wednesday was a big day at the Arboretum - with Mrs Cudahy acting as hostess to the cartoonists of the Tribune. They were all here - John T. McCutcheon, Orr, Parrish, and others to attend a class in tree sketching by Mrs Watts. CEG [Clarence E. Godshalk] and I also attended and accompanied them on a bus tour of the grounds afterward. - Letter from E. L. Kammerer to his brother and mother
Joe Parrish, Chief Editorial Cartoonist for the Trib from 1963 to 1970 and attendee of the aforementioned tree sketching class and Arboretum tour, was a noted political cartoonist who also created a popular series of cartoons for the paper titled “Nature Notes.”
Carey Orr was a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for the Tribune following a semi-pro baseball career.
John T. McCutcheon, another Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, drew both political cartoons and depictions of everyday people and life (several which can be viewed digitally on the Chicago History Museum’s website!) He traveled the world as a war correspondent and was the first president of the Chicago Zoological Society, overseeing creation of the Brookfield Zoo.
These three giants of editorial cartooning portrayed a vast variety of topics in their work - from politics to slice of life illustrations. I think it’s exciting that the Arboretum’s knowledgeable staff and diverse landscape were able to inspire their incredible work!
Beyond entertaining and educating cartoonists from the Chicago Tribune, at least a few members of the Arboretum’s staff contributed information directly to the newspaper in the mid-20th century.
May Watts wrote and illustrated a popular column for the newspaper titled “Nature Afoot” beginning in 1966:
Additionally, both she and Grandpa Kammerer were regularly called upon to share their extensive knowledge with the Tribune’s columnists:
Mr. [Richard] Orr phoned from the Tribune to get blooming data for his Sat. column. (He’s garden editor and I give him the data about Arb plants every week…) - July 14, 1955 Letter from E. L. Kammerer to his brother
Grandpa continued providing information to the Tribune’s garden section through the 1960s, appearing as a source on behalf of the Morton Arboretum in a number of columns by Art Kozelka, the first full-time garden editor at the Tribune.
Despite this consistent working relationship, it does seem there were some instances of tension between the Arboretum and the Tribune. This 1959 letter from Clarence Godshalk to Sterling Morton indicates that the columnists might have grown frustrated at being made to go through a dedicated publicity person for information:
You spoke of getting in touch with Mr. Orr and others of the Tribune about discouraging people coming to the Arboretum this fall. Since we have Mr. Spencer handling all publicity on the housing project we have had no write-ups from Orr, Miss Knock, or others who write up the Arboretum regularly. In fact, they didn’t even show any interest in Mr. Spencer’s write-ups for the housing project. I don’t know why, but maybe they don’t like such manufactured publicity as we now get.
The housing project Mr. Godshalk mentions was Arbordale, a cluster of staff houses on the Arboretum’s property designed by winners of an architectural competition. In 1959, the homes were landscaped to demonstrate gardening possibilities to local homeowners. Although Mr. Godshalk mentioned a dearth of coverage in the Trib, it appears there were a few articles announcing the landscaping projects, including one that ran in April of 1959:
The Morton Arboretum and Chicago Tribune both loom large in Chicagoland’s history. The paper and property have mutually benefitted each over the last hundred years, notably so during the decades when Grandpa Kammerer, May Watts, and so many other notable colleagues worked at the Arboretum. Combing through the history between these icons has been an especially enjoyable experience for this native Chicagolander!
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I didn’t know about WGN!
Interesting that Trib cartoonists utilized the Arboretum's experts to improve their 'cartooning'!