Daily Ramsey Blog: 5/2/12

Today’s cartoon almost never happened.

As you probably know, I’m now a part-time cartoonist and work from around 6 a.m. until noon. I had a completely different cartoon drawn for today — one that was highly inappropriate considering the the breaking news that would happen around the time I went to my second job (it was about Jackson Police Department and showed a man holding a gun on someone).  From noon until six, I’m at the radio station and it takes every second I have to put together three hours of live radio.

I felt sick because I wasn’t going to be able to honor Mike Walter, the Pearl policeman who was murdered by the thug.

I got off the air at six and noticed an e-mail from Ben Kelly (who now puts together the editorial page). He wanted to pull the other cartoon I had done (I completely agreed).  It looked like a syndicated cartoon from somewhere else was going to sit in the spot (something that STILL bothers me after a year and a half).  I asked what time the deadline was — he said 10:25 p.m.  OK.  I was completely off the clock, but I decided Walter was worth the tribute.  I ate, finished my project, did a three-mile run with my sons (which gave me time to think about what I was going to draw and be a dad for a few minutes) and came back and finished the cartoon.  I wanted to do the band on a badge — but it seemed cliched.  The twist, the part that made it unique to all the Facebook memes that you see, was that I was able to weave all the parts of his life into the details on the badge.  At 10 p.m., I dropped the finished cartoon into the folder so Ben could put it on the page.  I felt relieved that I had gotten the cartoon done.

Mike Walter’s passion drove him to be the best police officer he could be. It was the least I could do to relight my passion for one evening to make sure he got the honor he deserved.