AN ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION… By PETER BOSCH It’s Dick Tracy’s 95th anniversary! His newspaper strip first appeared Oct. 4, 1931, and has been published continuously since. Let’s go back in time to his origins. Chester Gould was born Nov. 20, 1900, in Pawnee, Oklahoma. Drawing was always a part of his youth and he made his first sale to a man he sketched at a political event. Gould’s professional life as an artist began at that moment. He was 8 years old. He continued to develop his talent by working for the Pawnee Courier-Dispatch (where his father was an editor) and by the time he was 21, he knew what he wanted to be (a comic strip cartoonist), where he wanted to work (the Chicago Tribune) and, in particular, who he wanted to work for (Joseph Patterson). Patterson was not only the co-publisher of the Tribune, he was the creator and manager of the Chicago Tribune Syndicate, the distributing arm to other newspapers of the company’s features — including its comic strips. Patterson had a track record without equal for giving the green light to new ideas for strips… strips that became incredible successes: Gasoline Alley, Harold Teen, Winnie Winkle, Smitty, Moon Mullins, and Little Orphan Annie! Gould moved to Chicago in 1921, with a portfolio of drawings by his side and $50 in his pocket. Over the next decade, however, he sent Patterson dozens of strip ideas yet never sold one. But Patterson was not without a heart, writing Gould personally, telling him to not be discouraged — and to keep sending him strip ideas. The aspiring cartoonist was still frustrated, though. For 10 years, he had worked for nearly every newspaper in town… but usually in their art departments. (He even got a job, temporarily, at the Tribune — illustrating ads). He did achieve a modicum of success as a cartoonist, drawing three different strips for the Chicago Evening American newspaper (Fillum Fables, The Radio Catts, and Why It’s a Windy City), as well as for the Chicago Daily News (The Girl Friends)… but they were all minor humor strips. And they weren’t in the Tribune. He was no longer the young man who arrived in the city a decade earlier. He was married and the father of a 4-year-old girl, with ambitions unfulfilled. He was also discouraged...