- Joined
- Aug 13, 2005
- Messages
- 19,240
- Reaction score
- 12,767
Today in Patriots History
Pat Patriot and a Pats Hall of Famer
( Dedicated to @italian pat patriot )
Pat Patriot and a Pats Hall of Famer
( Dedicated to @italian pat patriot )
April 19, 1960
Cartoonist Phil Bissell drew what would become known as Pat Patriot as part of his newspaper duties.
Pat gets his name from that first cartoon. Courtesy Phil Bissell
Great article on Bissell with some Patriot history here:
The Story Behind Patriot Pat from the Cartoonist Who Created Him
In 1960, Boston Globe cartoonist Phil Bissell, working for $25 a day, was handed an assignment that would change his life—and the lives of fans of the brand-new AFL football team coming to Boston.
“Sports editor Jerry Nason came to me and he said, ‘They’ve decided to call the team the Boston Patriots. You better have a cartoon ready for tomorrow’s edition.’ I sat down, I drew that cartoon original of Pat in about 45 minutes,” Bissell said. “I thought about it for about two minutes and went to work. I had to get the day’s work out.”
The whereabouts of that original drawing are a source of some consternation for Bissell.
“In those days, I was told I worked for the paper, they owned everything I did, and that was all there was to it,” he said. “And I told them at that time, a cartoonist should be able to get his material back, and what they were being paid—what I was being paid—should just be for use of that cartoon.”
After submitting it for publication, Bissell never saw the original drawing again.
“When the cartoon appeared in the paper, Nason took it, he gave it—G-A-V-E—he gave it away to Billy Sullivan, who was the owner of the Patriots,” Bissell said.
To make matters worse, the drawing would meet an untimely demise. As Bissell describes it, “It went up in flames in Billy Sullivan’s summer home on Cape Cod with all the original cover programs.”
That said, Bissell describes his relationship with Sullivan, who owned the Patriots from 1960 to 1988, as one of the best he’s ever had.
“When he got the cartoon, he wrote me a very nice letter thanking me because Jerry said I gave my permission for them to have it. It never happened,” Bissell said.
Upon learning about this miscommunication, Sullivan called Bissell into his office and not only paid him $100 for the use of his illustration, but hired him to create the artwork for the team’s now-famous program covers—placing an inordinate amount of trust in the cartoonist.
“Billy Sullivan told me, ‘I don’t want to see any of your covers until I enter the stadium, because when I see the covers in the hands of the people, and they are getting a smile out of it, I know the cartoons have been successful,'” Bissell said. “And that’s the way Billy Sullivan worked. He was an awful good egg.”
I was going to check out his book, but $987.25 for a paperback?!!!
Two years ago I saw it was $599 and I thought it was a typo ($5.99) but apparently not; it is an out of print highly coveted collector's item.
PatsPa!: 65 Years of Cartoons, Caricatures & Creating a Football Icon | Amazon
Another good article here, focusing on how the book above came to be, as well as his history.
Phil Bissell and the golden age of sports cartooning
ROCKPORT — The iconic image of the Colonial Patriot hiking the football sprang from his mind and his hands in less than an hour, so Phil Bissell’s license plate on
“I have two real sons, Steve and Chris, and I consider Pat to be my third son,” Bissell said one afternoon recently while sitting in his living room.
So, on April 18, 1960 — interestingly enough, the 185th anniversary of Paul Revere’s legendary midnight ride — Bissell sat down at his desk in the Globe newsroom. Within 45 minutes, he had come up with the rendering of the grizzled and intense Colonial soldier hiking the football, That cartoon was on the front page of the Globe the next day.
“I drew him and I named him and then he was stolen from me by Jerry Nason,” Bissell said, referring to then-Globe Sports Editor Jerry Nason. “I sat down and within 45 minutes it was ready to go to press.”
According to Bissell and his account in his book, Nason took the original drawing and gave it as a gift to Sullivan, who then decided that the Pat Patriot logo would be the Patriots’ official logo for the 1961 season — replacing the hideous tri-corner cap logo the team wore in its inaugural season.
“The following Monday, I received a phone call from Pat’s new parent thanking me for releasing my son to him,” Bissell wrote in his book. “I held back my tears as I informed Mr. Sullivan that I never offered to give him up or was I even given the chance to hug him, just once, before he ended up in his new parents’ arms.”
Sullivan, he wrote, ultimately paid him $100 to use Pat as the team logo.
His first sports cartoon was published when he was fourteen. After going to Boston School of Practical Arts, he did a stint in the army. He then became an office boy for the Christian Science Monitor, soon graduating to be their sports cartoonist. He was sports cartoonist for the Boston Herald and Boston Globe (1953-65). He designed the official logo of the Boston Patriots. His cartoon art is on display in the halls of fame for baseball, football, basketball, and hockey.
