Etta Hulme Self Portrait
Etta Hulme, acclaimed Star-Telegram cartoonist, dies
By Tim Madigan
tmadigan@star-telegram.com
Etta Hulme, a longtime Star-Telegram editorial cartoonist who rose to national prominence with her understated drawing style and liberal-leaning wit, died Wednesday at her Arlington home.
Mrs. Hulme, who had been in poor health in recent years, was 90.
She was one of the few women ever hired as a full-time newspaper editorial cartoonist.
Twice, in 1982 and 1998, she was named best editorial cartoonist by the National Cartoonist Society. And she was elected president of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists.
“For a long time, Etta was the only female editorial cartoonist,” said Ben Sargent, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist at the Austin American-Statesman.
“It was always a delight to see her at our conventions. She was like a den mother to all of us wild and crazy cartoonists. But she never made a big deal about being a female cartoonist. She was just a cartoonist. And her cartoons were so amazing.”
. . .
Mrs. Hulme’s work regularly infuriated her largely conservative audience, a notion that the cartoonist took in stride and even seemed to relish. Some compared her political leanings to those of the late columnist Molly Ivins and the late Gov. Ann Richards.
“Most of my hate mail — sure, I get hate mail — calls me a liberal,” Mrs. Hulme said in 1993. “But whatever opinions I have come naturally without my trying to take any particular stand. If I go on too long without one of my cartoons gettin’ me in the soup, I start to worry. A cartoonist ought to provoke.”
When asked whether Mrs. Hulme’s cartoons ever gave him headaches, former Star-Telegram Publisher Wes Turner replied, “Hell, yes.” But where the cartoonist was concerned, Turner said, the grief was worth it.
“She was a very liberal cartoonist, but she was a very excellent cartoonist,” Turner said. “She could tell a story better in one frame than a writer could in a thousand-word story.
“Her political persuasion and mine diverged, but I thought she made our paper better because she certainly got people talking and got people thinking, and that’s what a good political cartoonist does.”
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