Greg Williams produces more cartoons than newspapers can print (or do print) — he’s got a blog called WikiWorld as an outlet for some of them. At WikiWorld, he does a one-panel cartoon to accompany some article he found at Wikipedia. It’s much cooler than it sounds.
Do our history students appreciate the significance of Kilroy? Williams offers a quick cartoon to explain.
Would this make a good poster for a classroom? Greg Williams cartoon, Wikipedia information
In my studies of rhetoric at the University of Arizona, one class turned to a long discussion on Kilroy. Without the internet, we had to make do with memory, logic, argument, and a quick trip to the library to see what we could find quickly.
My thesis, which I still hold, is that the presence of Kilroy marks the existence of sanity in otherwise crazy world, and that the rise of Kilroy, or Kilroyism, in war, demonstrates the spirit necessary to win. Kilroy didn’t win the war singlehandedly, of course — but it was that spirit of Kilroy that turned the tide to victory for the Americans and allies so many times, in so many places.
Why isn’t Kilroy in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) list?
More, resources:
- More of Greg Williams’ work (some of this stuff is way cool)
- Blogjam is good, too — why isn’t this in the Dallas Morning News every week?
- Wikipedia entry on Kilroy
- Kilroy is engraved in stone. Really. See the picture below.
- Kilroy has his own website, explaining his biography
- James Kilroy of Boston, Massachusetts, won a contest to determine who was the real Kilroy
- “Kilroy was here” exhibit at the Ohio Historical Society
Kilroy, in granite, at the World War II Memorial, Washington, D.C. - Wikimedia image, photo by Luis Rubio
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
I read once that, to WWII serviceman, the ultimate would have been for man to arrive on the moon, only to “Kilroy was here”!
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