MU alumnus Mort Walker reminisces at dedication of Mort's Grill
Mort’s Grill opened for business Thursday.
Published Nov. 2, 2010
Mort Walker, creator of the "Beetle Bailey" comic strip, took a trip down memory lane with the opening of MU's $63 million student center in late October.
One new attraction of the MU Student Center is Mort’s Grill, a burger-style restaurant named after the "Beetle Bailey" creator. The grill includes a lounge area reminiscent of The Shack, a popular hangout for students until the 1980s.
“Planners for the student center were responsible for incorporating Shack memorabilia into the new student center,” Student & Auxiliary Services spokeswoman Michelle Froese said in an e-mail. “We contacted Mr. Walker, knowing that he had spent time in the Shack as a student during the 1940s.”
Walker said The Shack was the only student hangout at that time.
“You’d go to a sorority or fraternity house or something like that, or The Shack,” Walker said. “That’s where we used to congregate. It was very small and smelly, but I used to have staff meetings there.”
During his time at MU, Walker was a straight-A student and served as editor for the Showme, a campus humor magazine, which under Walker's leadership turned a profit for the first time in its history, much to the chagrin of then School of Journalism Dean Frank Mott.
Walker told the story of his own expulsion from the J school.
“After the war was over, I came back to finish my journalism training and went to talk to my adviser,” Walker said. “He told me that before going directly to journalism I had to take the prerequisite course. Dean Mott had a course called the History and Principles of Journalism, and you have to take that before going into journalism.”
Walker, having already earned a degree from Saint Louis University, did not want to postpone his schooling another year for an introductory course and entered the J school without taking it.
Walker said when Dean Mott asked him why he hadn’t taken History and Principles of Journalism, he responded he was too busy saving the world for democracy.
The next day Walker discovered his office at the Showme had been cleared out.
“They threw everything out in the hallway, all of my pencils and typewriters,” Walker said. “So I just gathered everything up in a basket and took it over to The Shack.”
Despite his abrupt departure, the cartoonist said he is still grateful for the honor from the university.
“It’s nice to be remembered,” Walker said. “It’s amazing how somebody gets kicked out of school and later on gets honored.”
The author said the comic strip industry has changed throughout the years and he works to evolve with it.
“I try to remain relevant,” Walker said. “I try to get a lot of my ideas right from the newspapers. We’re all trying to get comics on the Internet and sell advertising around them. It has been partially successful.”
Walker said he grew up knowing he wanted to be a comic strip artist.
“When I was three years old, my father used to send me down to get the Sunday paper and I would lie there in his arms and he’d read me Moon Mullins,” Walker said. “It was a great experience.”
Walker saw his first comic strip, The Lime Juicers, published in the Kansas City Journal at age 11. He began sending cartoons all over the country and sold about 350 before college.
“I had my own way of educating myself,” Walker said. “Classes didn’t mean anything to me. I learned by dealing with people and drawing my cartoons. I don’t think I suffered for it. I had an ambition to be a cartoonist, draw a famous comic strip and make a million dollars and I did it.”