Fred Prado

San Antonio Light cartoonist in 1949

Fred Prado drew the weather bird on the front page of the old San Antonio Light about fifty years ago, and he was also a sports cartoonist.

The San Antonio Light was an old Hearst paper that finally suspended publication in 1993. My parents loathed William Randolph Hearst but subscribed to the paper anyway. Hearst died in 1951, and his presence was heavy on this and every Hearst paper right up until then - I recall gruesome anti-vivisection spreads that had to be published at his command. (If you don't know who William Randolph Hearst was, see the movie "Citizen Kane" (Orson Welles, 1941).

I was ten years old in 1949, and I loved the paper with its comics and trashy easy-to-read syndicated features. My mother's father was a skilled Linotype operator who ran his own newspaper in Portland OR, and somehow my mother managed to get both of us a tour of the Light's downtown printing plant on May 10th, 1949, just fifty years ago as I first wrote this page. I remember getting a newspaper literally "hot off the press" and watching the Linotype operator set my name in two fonts, a small caps font used in want ads and a large italic font used in ad copy. I still have the heavy Babbitt metal sticks of type around here someplace.

The high point of the visit was getting meet Fred Prado, the in house cartoonist whose trademark was a bird he drew every day with the front page weather report. I'm pretty sure he also drew sports cartoons, but I can't remember for sure. He actually drew a picture of me - in short pants and glasses - shaking hands with his weather bird. Here's that picture, fifty years later.

If someone remembers Fred Prado and finds this site, I hope they'll e-mail me and tell me more about him. I have no idea how old he was - ten year olds notoriously lack skill in estimating the age of adults.

Some time before 1940 Fred Prado illustrated a book Hickeys th Name. I'm expecting a copy of this book in the mail shortly, and hope to scan some illustrations from it for this page.

Social Security Death Index (SSDI) contains a record of a Fred Prado, who almost certainly must be the San Antonio Light's cartoonist who was born 26 Sep 1907, died January 1978, last residence 78229 (San Antonio TX), SSN 455-03-0364.

Paul McIntosh, a night-shift Linotype operator at the Light in 1949, e-mailed me to note that he had known Prado, who often came in in the evening for the latest AP weather news before he drew the weather bird for the next day's paper.

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December 2nd, 2000