Marisa Acocella:
One of my favorite people on the planet, my absolute best friend among the cartoonists, and certainly the greatest living cartoonist, Sam Gross, aka S. Gross, the legend has passed.
Sam was the first cartoonist I met when I started going to the Tuesday cartoon meetings with Bob Mankoff. This was in the late 90s when The New Yorker was in Times Square. After the meetings I was invited to lunch. To be included in those Tuesday lunches with Sam, Mort Gerberg, Sidney Harris, Bud Handlesman, Warren Miller and Bob Weber was one of the highlights of my career and my life.
The cartoon meetings with Bob on Tuesday stopped at 12:00, and I always made it just in time. Sam would always wait for me. Sam and I always walked together from The New Yorker to whatever restaurant we chose for lunch. We would always sit next to each other. If we went to Pergola, the French restaurant, we would have our glass of wine, always on the look out for another cartoonist who didn’t drink theirs, and Sam and I would gleefully grab it and split it. It was one of our things.
Back then, Sam and I talked every Monday before our Tuesday meeting. Sam always believed in me, even when my belief in myself faltered. His great advice was “just show up”. He called his unbought cartoons his ”golden oldies”, and would often re-submit them with success. He told me to go back to them and re-submit them every once in a while.
I remember he would tell me to be a ”street rat” to survive as a cartoonist. Hit the street and go after the work. He was always a source of inspiration to me and gave the best advice. He’s a character in my graphic memoir Cancer Vixen and a major presence in my life.
This past year, my father passed, and, although Sam was in the hospital, he always asked about my mother when we spoke on the phone. She would get on the phone with him and the three of us would talk. He was always so generous and concerned about other people, even when his own health was failing. I am grateful that every time I spoke to him, I had the opportunity to tell him how much l loved him. He would always tell me “I love you, too, kid.”
As for the rest of the world, we are left with his brilliant cartoons. I hope you all look at them and enjoy them.
There is no better cartoonist.
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