I got this note from Mary Poole, Corky Trinidad’s editor at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.  Memorial cartoons from Corky’s cartoonist friends in Hawaii are below.

My Corky memorial cartoon.

Hi, Daryl,

About 300+ people  attended Corky’s funeral Mass on Sunday at the Newman Center on UH campus. It is a small Catholic center run by Jesuits, so small that packing in that many people probably violated several fire codes.

It was a nice service (including communion). The priest said he borrowed heavily from the obit written by Burl and other remembrances written by John Simonds and Ben Wood. I devoted the Sunday Insight (opinion section) to Corky. Two pages of his cartoons, one page for the cartoons by his friends and a “cartoon interview” that Burl did with Corky in 2001 before a showing of his artwork at a local gallery. All of that ran on Feb. 15. The next day I ran your cartoon and one by local graphic designer Alan Low.

I sent you all the cartoons by his friends. Dennis Fujitake, Dave Thorne and Gary Kato should be identified as co-founders along with Corky of the House of Cartoons, an organization, a club really, for Hawaii artists. Lots of young artists in Honolulu were members at one time or another…

Your cartoon was great. Thanks so much for doing it.

I miss him everyday when I look at our page template and stare at the blank hole at the top of the page.

Aloha,

Mary

Clay Jones, who once filled in for Corky for a year at the Star-Bulletin, now at the Free Lance-Star of Fredericksburg, Va.         

 

 
Alan Low, Owner of Alan Low Design, a Honolulu graphic design company.    

 

Kevin Hand, a former Star-Bulletin graphic artist and cartoonist, now works for Newsweek.      

 

Gary Kato, Honolulu cartoonist, co-founder of House of Cartoons.

 

Dave Thorne, Hawaii cartoonist and co-founder of House of Cartoons

Jon J. Murakami, one of Hawaii's best-known cartoonists, draws a twice-monthly strip for the Star-Bulletin.

Dennis Fujitake, Honolulu illustrator and cartoonist, member of House of Cartoons

 

I was so sorry to learn that Corky Trinidad died this morning.  Corky was a local treasure for Hawaii.  He was every cartoonist’s friend and a mentor to Hawaii’s young cartoonists. Corky was also incredibly prolific, drawing a mind blowing two cartoons a day, with a color cartoon on the front page of the paper and a second cartoon on the editorial page, for close to forty years.  

Some of our readers have noticed that Corky hasn’t been contributing cartoons to our site recently. He was diagnosed last October with pancreatic cancer. Corky was 69 years old.  His editor, Mary Poole, called me with the grim news. That’s Corky’s last cartoon, from November 25th, at the right.

I got to know Corky when I worked for a short stint as a cartoonist for the Honolulu Advertiser (the competing paper) and Hawaii’s Midweek newspaper. The Advertiser recently laid off their long time cartoonist, Dick Adair, who was also a great friend of Corky, and now Hawaii has no daily editorial cartoonist. Dick and a group of Corky’s cartoonist friends in Hawaii will be drawing tribute cartoons that the Star-Bulletin will publish soon.

Hawaii has it’s own, unique culture which Corky personified, and gave voice to in the newspaper. Corky was the ultimate local cartoonist; he connected with his local audience better than anyone else. Hawaii has a crazy stew of politics that is steeped in complex back-stories and cultural flavor that Corky mastered and served up with warm, gentle humor, every day. Corky only sent us his national cartoons, and I regret that our readers didn’t get the chance to appreciate Corky’s local impact.

A few of Corky’s best cartoons from last year are posted below, and an archive of the past eight years of Corky’s work can be seen here.  The Star-Bulletin has posted a pdf of a page of Corky’s cartoon highlights from over 40 years with the paper.  See the Star Bulletin’s obituary here.  Corky is survived by his wife Hana, an artist and dance director, and his five children: Lorenzo, Emmanuel, Pia Sprague, Lara Nishimura and Anela Trinidad; and two grandchildren, Kera Nishimura and Matty Sprague.  Corky’s website is here.