Bill Bates

Bill Bates, who created thousands of cartoons depicting Carmel village life with wit and affection, died May 21, 2009. He was 79 years old. Mr. Bates suffered a heart attack on July 1 at his studio, “Perspectacles,” preparing to open his first art gallery. While recovering at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, he contracted a staph infection in his lungs that he battled until his death. Mr. Bates worked for 36 years as a cartoonist for the Carmel Pine Cone after holding the position of cartoonist at the San Francisco Examiner. “The most popular ones were the ones about Carmel life: gently sardonic, gently poking fun, but with love,” said close friend David Loye, who published Mr. Bates' book, Bates on Bush. “What really hurt me was that Bill was just coming into his own as a brilliant political cartoonist when he passed away.” In recent years, Mr. Bates started a memoir and drew for the Monterey County Herald, where his political cartoons rattled some conservatives. “Even his former CarmelPine Cone Publisher Paul Miller sent in a letter about one of them,” Loye added. But the Monterey Peninsula community-at-large valued his work. He was juried into the Carmel Art Association as an Artist Member. The Pine Cone nominated him twice for a Pulitzer Prize. And in 2006, when the Carmel post office took down a collection of Mr. Bates' cartoons, a large number of people protested. The cartoons were put back up and remain up to this day. Mr. Bates was born in Texas on January 6, 1930. He traveled the world as a dance host and artist for three different cruise lines. He would sketch passengers, their destinations, and the native residents of exotic lands. Then he would publish a book and give every passenger a copy. “We're near the end of an era on the Monterey Peninsula,” said John Livernois, former editor of the Herald. “For a while, the Monterey area was just rich with famous cartoonists.” In the 1980s Mr. Bates and other artists, including Dennis the Menace creator Hank Ketcham and Gordo creator Gus Arriola, began meeting in Carmel on Tuesdays for coffee. They called the roundtables “Toonsday.”