![]() ![]() At age nine, Al lost a leg when he was run over by a street car. They were so poor that his mother had to sift through trash cans to salvage used-coal dregs to heat their home. In 1979, he smothered to death from chain-smoking for more than 60 years.Īlfred Gerald Caplin was born in 1909 in New Haven, Connecticut to parents who had come to the United States to escape the persecution of Jews in Russia. Unfortunately, he was a life-long chain-smoker which damaged his lungs, causing emphysema that had him gasping for breath and confined to an oxygen tent. Through Li’l Abner and his other cartoon work, Al Capp was a spokesperson for all disabled and down-trodden people and a war hero who worked tirelessly to support American soldiers during World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam War. After he left, everyone would look at me and say, “Do you know who that was?” He would come in frequently for an Alka Seltzer to treat his upset stomach. Today, many high schools and colleges still celebrate “Sadie Hawkins Day” where the women ask the men for a date.įrom 1949 through 1951 I knew Al Capp as a customer when I was a soda jerk at the Gary Drug Store in Beacon Hill in Boston. After 20 years, on March 31, 1952, Li’l Abner finally married Daisy Mae and the wedding was featured on the cover of Life, the most-read magazine in the United States. The story often centered on Li’l Abner’s voluptuous and virtuous girlfriend, Daisy Mae, and her many attempts to get Li’l Abner to marry her. Al Capp got the family name, “Yokum” from the Hebrew word Yehoyaqim that means “raised by God”. Li’l Abner Yokum, a stupid but good-natured hayseed, was the son of Mammy Yokum, the scrawniest and strongest woman in Dogpatch, and her shiftless husband, Pappy Yokum. It had 60 million daily readers in more than 1000 newspapers in 28 countries. From 1934 to 1977, Al Capp wrote the most-read comic strip in North America, Li’l Abner, about hillbillies in the fictional town of Dogpatch, Kentucky. ![]()
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