I think you know who these guys are.

Caricatures appeared periodically at Hanna-Barbera, especially on The Flintstones; we don't need to name them. Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera were caricatured, too. The Color It Happy pilot of the late '60s comes to mind. So does another would-be show from '70s called Duffy's Dozen, where Bill and Joe voiced their characters. They were drawn by the same man who signed the drawing above. It was an assistant animator named Ben Shenkman (the art came from the May 1970 edition of Hollywood Studio Magazine.

Shenkman was a native New Yorker, born July 3, 1913. We can thank film historian Donald Crafton for some biographical material he wrote for the January 1993 issue of Film History in an article entitled “The View From Termite Terrace: Caricature and Parody in Warner Bros Animation.”

Shenkman’s career can be seen as typical for the industry. In the late 1920s he was working as an office boy at Columbia in New York. He aspired to be a cartoonist and one of his sketches of the manager was published in the Columbia Beacon. The boss introduced Shenkman to Max Fleischer, whose animation studio was nearby, and he joined the ink-and-paint staff. He was soon laid off and returned to Columbia, but this time in Charles Mintz’s cartoon unit. Mintz moved Krazy Kat production to Hollywood in 1930 and invited 16-year old Shenkman to join as an in-betweener, a job he accepted and held for nine years. But his talent as a caricaturist was well-known, and he was in demand as a designer of greeting cards, invitations and occasional publicity drawings. Friz Freleng, recently returned to Schlesinger’s from a stint at MGM in mid-April, 1939, know about Shenkman by way of his friend at Columbia, Art Davis, and invited him to work on Malibu Beach Party.

The cartoon was released in 1940. It was a parody of the Jack Benny radio show, with Benny inviting movie stars (Gable, Garbo, Raft, Bette Davis and so on). Crafton goes on:

Schlesinger had an agreement that Benny would have the right to approve the drawings and the film and Mary Livingston[e], in fact, did insist that the caricaturist ‘do something about the nose’ before filming commenced. [Livingstone was so snout-sensitive, she had a nose job]. The stars’ studio photographs provided the basis for the sketches. Shenkman recalls that the principal’s voices were recorded by the stars themselves, but some of the others might have been impersonated. [If that was the case, the sound wasn’t used. KFWB’s Jack Lescoulie provides the voice of Benny].
The success of his caricatures led to Shenkman’s being hired by the studio in March 1940 as an animation assistant. [Tex] Avery had been working on Hollywood Steps Out well before Freleng’s film was released, and immediately engaged Shenkman to do caricatures. Avery took him and a background artist [Johnny Johnsen] to Ciro’s to make notes and sketches of the décor and guests. Schlesinger probably had obtained permission from the restaurant. Shenkman made about fifty model sheets of celebrities which the animators adapted for head size, perspective rendering and, of course, movement. Parts of the action were rotoscoped. In the scenes where Clark Gable and a mysterious lady do a Rhumba, Shenkman was filmed dancing with Mildred (Dixie) Mankemeyer, fiancée of [animator] Paul Smith.
[snip]
Both these films have a bit of documentary quality about them, derived in no small part from Shenkman’s hard-edged ‘photographic’ style caricatures.

He enlisted in the army on Dec. 31, 1942 and was discharged on Dec. 16, 1944.

When Shenkman left Warners is difficult to say. Webb credits him with the Peter Lorre caricature in Birth of a Notion (1947). The page to the left comes a Los Angeles Times magazine. Shenkman painted all the art for his son’s bedroom, but the short article that goes with it only calls him an “artist” and does not say where he was working. The 1950 Census return lists his occupation as “cartoonist, movie.”

He gained a connection with Hanna and Barbera when he moved to the MGM cartoon studio. He is responsible for a drawing of a group of artists at the studio in 1956; the staff members have been identified by H-B background artist Art Lozzi. There is a grey-scale version of this drawing in Martha Sigall’s wonderful book on her career in animation, but this comes from the Cartoon Research website.

Here’s more of Shenkman’s work. This must have been done on a freelance basis as it appeared in the Sunday magazine of the Boston Globe on Oct. 22, 1961. That's a good-looking Bugs.

We’ve posted a bit about Shenkman on the Yowp blog before. He took part in the ninth annual “Operation Art for the Armed Forces” in mid-December 1961 at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Oakland. Taking part were Hanna-Barbera writers Mike Maltese and Warren Foster, who showed some cartoons from the Huckleberry Hound Show and gave away cels; Johnny Johnson, Tex Avery’s background painter dating back to the Warner Bros. days; Phil Duncan, who had his own studio called TV Cartoon Products and freelanced for Hanna-Barbera; and Fred Crippen, the UPA artist who later created Roger Ramjet.

The story gives a bit of background, though I caution that other "facts" contained in it aren't quite correct. It says Shenkman "has done portraits and caricatures for Disney and MGM and is now with UPA." I don't know about his Disney connection, but Keith Scott's essential The Moose That Roared has his name on the list of the early Rocky and Bullwinkle animation was that done in Hollywood.

This picture of Shenkman with his drawing of Bill and Joe dates from 1967, according to a commenter on this blog some years ago.

Shenkman seemed to like the volunteer gig for the armed forces. Here is a December 1966 photo from "Operation Art For the Armed Forces." Second left in the top row is Jerry Eisenberg, layout man at Hanna-Barbera. I hope you've read his interview on this blog. Jerry, as you have read, pitched series ideas to Joe Barbera and the article in The Oak Leaf mentions he was working on the Yogi Bear Sunday comics. Background artist Janet Brown is next to him. Also shown are two H-B animators, Larry Silverman and Bill Carney. Silverman's career went back to the silent days and he's better known for his work on the East Coast, mainly at Terrytoons, though his name shows up on a 1933 Harman-Ising cartoon, Wake Up the Gypsy For Me, for Warner Bros.


Shenkman was back a year later. He is at the lower left. At the top left is another well-known Hanna-Barbera artist, background painter Dick Thomas, who started at Warners in the late '30s. Murray McClelland was also employed at Hanna-Barbera at the time, and at the top far right is 84-year-old Johnny Johnsen, who seems to have retired from MGM before Hanna and Barbera set up their own studio in 1957.


We've found one other story about a Shenkman caricature event. It was in a Los Angeles suburb in 1964. Also taking part in it was Art Leonardi, the ex-Warners animator who rose through the ranks at DePatie-Freleng.

Again, it's unclear when Shenkman left Hanna-Barbera. Harvey Deneroff, a fine historian with animation in his family, spoke to Shenkman and says he later worked at Filmation, DePatie-Freleng and for Ralph Bakshi. His credits include Archie’s Funhouse, Star Trek: The Animated Series, Coonskin, Wizards and Hey Good Lookin’.

Shenkman died in Los Angeles on April 14, 1996.

There’s something pleasing about seeing pictures of the people who worked on the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Of course, publicity photos of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera have been around since their days at MGM. Cartoon histories/biographies come up with snapshots of some of the artists, writers and musical director Hoyt Curtin.

A few were published in an article on the studio in Hollywood Studio magazine’s issue of April 1967. I’m sure you’ve seen clearer copies of the photos of writers Tony Benedict and Warren Foster. But there are also pictures of two of the studio’s sound cutters which I don’t remember seeing before.

Greg Watson worked with Hanna and Barbera at MGM. He was the junior film editor under Jim Faris and moved over to H-B in 1957 (Warner Leighton was hired for the H-B sound department the same year). Watson, Hanna and Barbera brought some of the MGM cartoon sound effects with them; Fred MacAlpin was MGM’s original sound editor in 1937 and some of his effects can be heard in early H-B cartoons. Among Watson’s creations, according to a 1994 USA Today article, was the pitter-patter of Fred Flintstone’s feet while starting the Flintmobile. It was made by Watson pounding the palms of his hands on Hanna’s leather couch.

Also pictured is Don Douglas. Watson told Fred Seibert about him in 1995: “He most recently was working at Universal, and he created a thing by combining violin plucks, you know, pizzicato, and a couple of other sounds, and we called it ‘Pixie and Dixie Hop’.”

Watson has passed away. I don’t know about Douglas.

Though the article was written in 1967, the photos are several years old. You’ll notice the cinder block walls in the back of the sound cutting room. They’re from the second Hanna-Barbera studio in the windowless “bunker” studio at 3501 Cahuenga Blvd., down the street from where they constructed the studio familiar to fans.



I’m not going to re-post the article as it deals with mid ‘60s Hanna-Barbera cartoons, but you can read it at on this site.

Note: This is post 1,400 on Yowp. I can’t say it’s the last as I have things from Earl Kress I’d like to post but I can’t find the time to write. Posts on my other blogs were written months ago.

Today marks ten years since the passing of William Denby Hanna, a shell of his Tom-and-Jerry-creating former self due to the ravages of Alzheimer’s. To his animation staff, he may have been known as the guy who said “Knock off this !?%*!?! crap and get back to work!” To history, he may be known as one half of the founder of television animation as we know it today, with the good and bad that comes from it. And to people who enjoy the silly adventures of blue dogs from North Carolina, overly-confident rhyming bears and clueless cowpoke horses, he was someone who has brought—and still brings—hours of enjoyment.

Many eulogies were written about Hanna at the time of his death. Perhaps one of the cleverest was in Hank Stuever’s column in the Washington Post of March 24, 2001. Hank did something none of the newspaper obituaries did. He let the Hanna-Barbera characters speak.

Bill Hanna, Remembered
Excerpts from an Oral History
By Hank Stuever

Saturday morning cartoon king William Hanna, 90, died at his North Hollywood home Thursday. What follows are excerpts from a never-finished British television documentary, an oral-history account of the glory days of Hanna-Barbera animation studios . . .

JERRY: I wasn't quite sure of the concept. You have to remember this was the 1940s, and I'm just this mouse from the Midwest, right? What did I know? I knew one thing -- I didn't want to work with cats, I didn't care how much they paid me, which was $65 a week, by the way. I was scared. But Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera knew it would work. So I get to the set and the orchestra's ready to go, they've built this enormous kitchen . . . and I'm just petrified. Bill Hanna came over and talked to me, calmed me down. He said, "Jerry, just relax. You're not going to die. The cat is not going to eat you." I know it sounds crazy now, but this was very early in the cat-and-mouse thing. I trusted Bill. Everything was okay.

WILMA FLINTSTONE: I said to him one day, "Bill, you really oughta patent this stuff." I mean, the little woolly mammoth who vacuumed the carpet? I would have bought six of them to give as wedding presents or something! People don't know this, but Bill was king of the modern Stone Age household gadgets. The decor, the look -- that was him. Those houses were solid. He did let me keep one of the boulder sofas. I think he could have been another Rock Lloyd Wright, but he was so brilliant already at the cartoons.

HUCKLEBERRY HOUND: Sometimes we'd all go over to Bill and Violet Hanna's place, on Sunday afternoons. He'd barbecue, put on some jazz. It was nice. North Hollywood was like a small town, people didn't really gossip much then. It was no big deal to have cartoon characters over to the house. He never treated us two- dimensionally.

TOP CAT: He did have his favorites. I don't think I was one. I mean, what am I? A yellow cat with a vest on. I said, "Bill, I can do more than scrounge around and bebop." I always wanted some adventure.

One time Bill caught me hanging out on the "Jonny Quest" lot and called me into his office for a little Come-to-Jesus meeting. I understood. I was grateful to be working, don't get me wrong. I just don't think people appreciate us utility cats, the ones who aren't the stars. Maybe Bill did.

QUICK DRAW McGRAW: It's true, the cartoons we did were cheaper. Over at Warner Bros., they worked those characters until they were exhausted -- day and night. Sure, you could go work for Chuck Jones, and a lucky few got on the Disney gravy train, but sooner or later you would be strung out. Bugs, Daffy, Wile E. -- I'd bump into them at the Brown Derby or somewhere around town and they looked awful, just completely wasted, taking one pill to get out of bed and another pill so they could get an anvil in the head. Sad, is what it was.

This is what I liked about Bill: He knew the value of the nine-hour workday. His thinking was "Why do something in 500 drawings when you can do it in 150?" That's why we all lasted so long. We weren't drawn to death.

YOGI BEAR: People said the cartoons were cheap, that they wouldn't last, that nobody would cherish them. Just the other day there's a cereal bowl with my face on it for sale on eBay. It's going for $325.

So you tell me.

HADJI: Bill hired me to be Jonny Quest's best friend. The guys in marketing said, "Are you sure? The kid's wearing a turban." I mean, it's true, I had to play up the accent a little, but I think Bill was way ahead on this. It was the first time the kids at home saw someone in a turban who wasn't the bad guy. Someone scrawled some kind of slur on my locker, it said, "Go Home, India Ink" or something like that. Bill called a studio-wide meeting and made it clear that his shop was going to be integrated -- white, black, pink, hot pink, purple, humanoid, Herculoid, beast, robot, whatever. This was 1965. This was years before anyone ever heard of sensitivity training in the workplace.

SNAGGLEPUSS: He never once asked me about my private life. He didn't care. Heavens to Murgatroyd, why should anybody care? At his parties, up at the house, I'd bring Sylvester with me and nobody gave a [expletive].

BOO BOO BEAR: The wonderful thing with the cartoons that Bill and Joe did was that they were about us, the characters. It had to be, because too much action was too hard to draw. That's why the same pine trees keep going by as I walk in the forest. The focus was on the acting, not on the backgrounds. Leave that whole Wagnerian forest thing to the snobs at Warner, you know what I'm saying? (Boo Boo has brief coughing fit here.) [expletive] sorry. Got this sinus thing. Where was I? Oh yeah, the trees and stuff. Take, for example, a picnic basket: You had to see the picnic basket, feel the presence of the picnic basket. Whether or not there really was a picnic basket. The magic happens inside of you. Bill taught us that.

ASTRO: Rill ras reat. Ren I ras reeling really rad, Rill runderstood. Re rame to ree me ren I ras at the Retty Rord Rinic. Robody relse did, rot even Reorge Retson. (Begins crying.)

DICK DASTARDLY: Things changed. Little things. I showed up one day at the studio and the Banana Splits were running around. They weren't even cartoons, it was humans in fur suits. I started to worry. Around that time, I was seriously considering going to work for Jay Ward and the "Bullwinkle" crew across town. They were more my speed - tying heroes to train tracks, that kind of thing. Bill said the world needed villains like me, that everything would be okay, so I believed him.

SHAGGY: Like, man, the late '60s got pretty wild. Hanna-Barbera ruled Saturday morning, it was really the high point. The parties would get crazy. Scooby and I would get there and I'd be zoinksed out of my mind already -- and starving.

I remember one night, Josie and the Pussycats were performing out by the pool. Magilla Gorilla picks up that hot Pussycat drummer - what was her name? Melody? -- and just throws her into the pool, drum kit and all. At first we thought Bill was gonna be really P.O.'d about that. But he paused a beat, with that stern look on his face, holding a drink in his hand, and then burst out laughing. Then we all jumped in the pool. The party went on till at least 4 a.m.

I'll never forget that night, you know why? It was the same night as the Tate-LaBianca murders. It was only about a mile away from where the party was. Jinkies, that Charlie Manson [expletive] freaks me out. We spent the whole next day, hung over, driving around in the Mystery Machine, looking for clues. Bill helped.

AQUAMAN: When it came time to re-up for another season -- I think this was in '74, maybe '75 -- all of us Super Friends went into Bill's office to talk about our contracts. We each wanted a million bucks per episode, and we knew we had to stick together. We knew they couldn't keep the show going without all of us Friends.

I gotta hand it to Bill, he was tough. I mean, we're freakin' superheroes, and he never flinched, never backed down. We all got raises, but nowhere near a million per. Bill was crafty, too. When we started the new season, he'd added the Wonder Twins and that little super-chimpanzee thing. I noticed in some of the scripts that the Legion of Doom was kicking our butts a bit more. I think it was Bill's subtle way of letting us know we could easily be replaced.

SCRAPPY-DOO: People hated me. I mean, hated. The last thing Scooby-Doo needed was an obnoxious nephew. Bill was very protective of me, though, and I appreciated that. When my contract wasn't renewed, he gave me a good severance package. He knew it wasn't my fault.

YOGI BEAR: You could tell that they were cutting corners here and there. The studio couldn't keep up with the workload, and folks were getting bored. I saw the script for the all-star "Laff-a-Lympics" and thought, oh, brother. I called my agent. I said, "I'll do it, but only because Bill's asking me to." Before I know it, I'm paddling a raft in a relay race against Captain Caveman and Hong Kong Phooey. To tell you the truth, I was drunk.

PAPA SMURF: We were taking a break from a big song-and-dance number, and word came down that the whole operation had been sold to Ted Turner. I think we all knew that Bill and Joe were getting tired of the day-to-day stuff. Bill came down and told the staff what was happening. It turns out he was making sure we'd all be taken care of in our old age. They were talking about a kind of "cartoon channel" on cable TV. We'd be on 24 hours a day, and yes, there'd be royalty payments. We'd go on forever. I'm sure that's what Bill wanted: For us to go on smurfing and doing our thing.

Bill Hanna was born 100 years ago today in a little town in New Mexico. His name will forever be coupled with Joe Barbera’s, as it was during his lifetime. It’s difficult finding any old interviews of Hanna solo. If anything, Barbera seems to have been the dominant talker of the pair when discussing their studio or cartoons with interviewers.

Hanna wrote an autobiography where he likes everything and everyone, coming across as a humble, small-town Boy Scout who had a pleasant life surrounded by pleasant, creative people and pleasant, creative cartoons. Whether that’s true, I don’t know—the cynic in me realises Hollywood invents tales about just about everyone, imbuing people with qualities they don’t possess—but I’d like to think it is.

There may be one or two of you not familiar with Hanna’s life, so one of the best capsules may be found in his obituary. The AP wire had several different versions by Gary Gentile for papers of March 23, 2001, the day after Hanna’s death. Below is a combination story. The first photo you see is from 1988. The second is from 2000 and taken at the Los Angeles Museum of Television and Radio when Bill and Joe received a lifetime achievement award. Both accompanied various AP obits.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — His animated characters danced with Gene Kelly, won Oscars and Emmys, and uttered some of television’s most memorable lines, including the jubilant chant of everybody’s favorite caveman: “Yabba dabba doo!”
William Hanna, who with partner Joseph Barbara created such beloved cartoon characters as Fred Flintstone, Yogi Bear and Tom and Jerry, died Thursday at age 90.
Most of the duo’s frisky and cagey characters still delight audiences today, including Quick Draw McGraw and his sidekick Baba Louie [sic]; Snagglepuss, a lisping, chickenhearted lion; Top Cat, Magilla Gorilla and Scooby Doo.
Hanna died at his North Hollywood home with Violet, his wife of 65 years, at his side, said Sarah Carragher, director of publicity at Warner Bros., which now owns the Hanna-Barbera Studios.
The cause of death was not known, but Hanna had been in declining health for the last few years, Carragher said.
Hanna and Barbera collaborated for more than a half-century, first teaming up when both were working at MGM in the late 1930s. They created the highly successful Tom and Jerry cartoons, the antics of cat and mouse that won seven Academy Awards, more than any other series with the same characters.
“There are literally thousands of people working in the television animation business today who had the honor of training under Mr. Hanna,” said Jean MacCurdy, president of Warner Bros. Animation. “I was privileged enough to have been one of them. We will miss him terribly.”
Their cartoon classics have been turned into live-action feature films, including 1994’s “The Flintstones,” starring John Goodman, and “Scooby-Doo,” due out next year from Warner Bros.
Many of their shows can still be seen on the Boomerang cable network, created by the Cartoon Network this year as a showcase for the Hanna-Barbera library.
“We are greatly saddened by the death of one of the most influential animators of our time,” said Betty Cohen, Cartoon Network president.
“Bill was a cartoon scientist and a genius at timing. The cartoons of Hanna-Barbera have influenced and entertained generations of kids and adults and will serve as a legacy to his talent.”
Hanna was born in Melrose, N.M., on July 14, 1910. He left college to work as a construction engineer, but lost his job in the Depression. He found work with Leon Schlesinger, head of Pacific Art and Title, a cartoon production company.
In 1930, Hanna signed with Harmon-Ising Studios, the company that created the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoon series, where he worked as a member of the story department, as a lyricist and a composer.
One month after being hired at MGM, he formed his partnership with Barbera.
The two first teamed cat and mouse in the short “Puss Gets the Boot.” When it was a hit with audiences and got an Academy Award nomination, MGM let the pair keep experimenting with the cat and mouse theme. The full-fledged Tom and Jerry characters — almost always telling the story entirely in action, not dialogue — were the eventual result; Jerry was borrowed for the mostly live-action musical “Anchors Aweigh,” dancing with Gene Kelly in a scene that became a screen classic.
Starting in the ‘50s, they created a witty series of television animated comedies, highlighted by “The Flintstones,” “The Jetsons,” “Yogi Bear” and “Huckleberry Hound.”
The team’s move into television wasn’t planned; they were forced to go into business for themselves after MGM folded their animation department.
With television’s sharply lower budgets, their new animated stars put more stress on verbal wit rather than the highly detailed, and highly expensive, action of the theatrical cartoon.
Like “The Simpsons” three decades later, “The Flintstones” found success in prime-time TV by not limiting its reach to children. It ranked in the top 20 shows during the 1960-61 season and Fred Flintstone’s “yabba dabba doo” soon entered the language.
Hanna and Barbera freely admitted it was a parody of “The Honeymooners,” with Fred Flintstone as Jackie Gleason and Barney Rubble as Art Carney. Likewise, Yogi Bear was modeled on Phil Silvers’ character of Sgt. Bilko in “The Phil Silvers Show.” [sic]
“You can read a lot into it,” Hanna once said. “You can compare Fred and Barney Rubble with Gleason and Carney.”
The Jetsons, which debuted in 1962, were the futuristic mirror image of the Flintstones. “Somebody said, ‘What’s next?’ and we went from the rock era into the future,” Barbera said at a celebration when the show turned 25 in 1987. “It wasn’t that brilliant, really, but we used a lot of gimmicks and gadgets and it worked.”
Hanna-Barbera received eight Emmys, including the Governors Award of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences presented in 1988.
Their strengths melded perfectly, critic Leonard Martin wrote in his book “Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons.” In a medium where the best works combined unforgettable characters and funny situations, Hanna brought cuteness, warmth and a keen sense of timing to the cartoons.
“This writing-directing team may hold a record for producing consistently superior cartoons using the same characters year after year — without a break or change in routine,” Maltin wrote.
Barbera brought the comic gags and skilled drawing.
“I was never a good artist,” Hanna said, but Barbera “has the ability to capture mood and expression in a quick sketch better than anyone I’ve ever known.”
Hanna is survived by his wife, a son and daughter, and seven grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements were pending.

As I mentioned, there are only few occasions I’ve seen Hanna’s name not mentioned with Barbera’s. If you’ve read their books, you’ll know the two had completely separate lives away from the studio. Here’s an odd one from the Owosso Argus-Press of November 7, 1961. The story is about Dr. and Mrs. G.W. Bennett of Elsie, Michigan. Dr. Bennett was in California to attend a meeting of the American Society of Anasthesiologists. The couple were invited to a party at a restaurant at Laguna Beach.

“... an art colony of painters, hand potters and workers in copper and brass.
It was here that the Bennetts met Bill Hanna, artist for TV’s Flintstones. He drew pictures of the four main characters, which he autographed. They are now prize possessions of the Bennett’s grandson, Bobby Hardaker, a Flintstones fan.

Now, I know Hanna was responsible for timing of cartoons and handing out scenes to animators in the MGM days, but I’ve never really known him to draw. Regardless, he left behind a legacy in the world of drawings. Someone known to many readers here put it in appropriate words in a feature story about Hanna in the New York Times of December 30, 2001:

“I’m sure when Bill and Joe came out with their TV shows, people were, like, ‘Oh, you've destroyed animation, and it’s never going to be the same again, and you’ve wrecked it, and the old shorts were classic and now they’re horrible,’” says Craig McCracken, creator of the punk but cute ''Powerpuff Girls'' for Hanna-Barbera. “Now that stuff is considered classic. I like it a lot better. The most important thing is the character. No matter how many drawings you stick into a scene, if that character is not appealing or interesting or funny, no one is going to laugh at it. The designs pop off the screen a lot more than old Tom and Jerry’s. There’s something really graphic and iconic about Hanna-Barbera’s television work. You just can’t take your eyes off it.”

And Steve Box of Wallace and Gromit succinctly and eloquently put it this way when asked by the BBC to comment on Hanna’s productions:

“They seemed to have been made just for me and I never felt patronised by them.”

Bill Hanna helped gather together creative people who provided enjoyment and happy memories for several generations. What better thing to leave behind?