George C. "Bob" Bales (1920-2016)

George Carson Bales, nicknamed Bob, was born on April 5, 1920, in Terre Haute, Indiana. His parents were William F. Bales (1891-1960), a farmer, and Beatrice Myer Bales (1896-1977), a farmer's wife and a postmistress at the Dana, Indiana, post office for thirty-seven years. Bob had an older brother, Jack Truitt Bales (1918-2011), who was an aviator, engineer, and real estate developer. You can read more about him on the website Find A Grave, here.

In addition to their many accomplishments on their own, the Bales brothers had connections to fame and accomplishment through their family. They are descended from Mordecai Beall (1739-?), who served in a Maryland military unit during the Revolutionary War. (Beall's son William changed the spelling of the family name.) They are also descended from Thomas White, a member of the Boston Tea Party. Hoosiers will recognize Dana, where Beatrice Bales worked as postmistress, as the hometown of war correspondent and author Ernie Pyle (1900-1945). According to Pyle's biographer, Jack and Bob Bales are the step-grandsons of Pyle's Aunt Mary Bales. (1) It was from Pyle that Bob Bales received his first set of oil paints, a Christmas gift in 1931. Pyle visited his relative Jack Bales, who called him "Uncle Shag," in the South Pacific during World War II and wrote about eating fried chicken from Indiana, canned by Aunt Mary and sent halfway around the world.

The Bales family lived in Vermillion County, the skinniest county in Indiana, when the boys were young. Both Jack and Bob matriculated at the University of Illinois, Jack to study law and Bob to study art under visiting portraitist Robert Philipp (1895-1981). (2) Bob went on to study portraiture under Will Foster (1882-1953) in Los Angeles, and under Robert Brackman (1898-1980) in New York City. (3)

Bob Bales graduated from the University of Illinois in 1941 and went into the U.S. Army. During World War II, he flew C-46s in the European Theatre. He was also qualified as a pilot and observer on B-24s. (Jack Bales was also an aviator during the war and served in the South Pacific.) Separating in December 1945, Bob studied art in Los Angeles and went to work for the Walt Disney studios on the strength of just one drawing he carried to his job interview. He worked as an illustrator on Song of the South (1946), the Little Toot and Pecos Bill segments of Melody Time (1948), and The Wind in the Willows (1949).

Bob returned to active duty in 1947 and served as a pilot in the southeast and east Asia region, deploying to the Philippines in 1950 with the 18th Fighter-Bomber Wing. In July 1950, at the start of the Korean War, he volunteered to go to the peninsula, where he helped establish a forward airfield, only to tear it down again as North Korean and Chinese forces advanced on the position. He was the only professional artist on the peninsula during that first hard winter. Using Jeep gas as paint thinner, he executed eight rapid-fire canvases, reducing his brushes to mere nubs in the process. Bob's Korean paintings were later part of a group of canvases he donated to the U.S. Air Force.

From 1952 to 1963, Bob was instrumental in the development of the U.S. Air Force art program, eventually serving as chief and retiring in 1963 as a lieutenant colonel. He joined the staff of Pepperdine University, earning a doctorate in business administration in 1971 and rising to the level of a vice-presidency within the university. He retired to Birmingham, Alabama, his wife's hometown, in 1980.

In addition to being an artist, aviator, and university administrator, Bob Bales was the author of Jet Aces of the Korean Conflict (1957), Ernie Pyle: A Hoosier Childhood (2002), and Ernie Pyle's Southwest (2003). After his death, his widow, Peggy Bales, remarked, "He lived life to the fullest like no one I ever knew." Among the other accomplishments of his long life and career: Eagle Scout, varsity wrestler, horseshoe pitcher, member of the Society of Illustrators, skin diver, and hunter. Bob Bales died on December 13, 2016, at age ninety-six.

Notes

(1) See The Story of Ernie Pyle by Lee G. Miller (New York: The Viking Press, 1950), p. 394.

(2) Born Moses Solomon Philipp, the artist was known as Robert in his youth. He later changed his name legally. George Carson Bales--with no Robert in sight--is nicknamed Bob. Could he have followed the example of his famous teacher?

(3) Philipp and Brackman both painted portraits of movie stars. I wonder if those connections helped Bob Bales break into moviemaking as an artist at the Walt Disney studios.

"USAF Friends Near K-9, Korea" by George C. Bales. K-9 was near the coast in far southern South Korea. I was stationed in the central part of the peninsula, south of Seoul, more than forty years later. Despite the passage of those four decades and more, I can say that this doesn't look very much different from the place where I served.

Revised and updated on December 6, 2019.
Text and captions copyright 2016, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

George C. Peed (1913-2002)

George Peed was not well known by name, not like Dr. Seuss or Maurice Sendak, but if you were a child in America in the 1970s, you were probably familiar with his art, for Peed created countless covers for Peter Pan Records of Newark, New Jersey, a place not far from his adopted home. Make no mistake though--George Peed was a Hoosier through and through.

George C. Peed was born on September 27, 1913, in Grandview, Indiana, a place on the Ohio River. A younger brother, William Bartlett Peed, came into the world sixteen months later, on January 29, 1915. When the two boys and their brother were still quite young, they moved with their mother to Indianapolis. Their father had been drafted into the army during World War I, and though he didn't go overseas, he also didn't go back to his family. To those who asked, Mrs. Peed, a teacher, simply said that her husband was a traveling salesman and away on a trip.

The Peed boys grew up on the east side of Indianapolis and attended Arsenal Technical High School. George and Bill, both artists, also attended the Herron School of Art, and both signed on with Walt Disney studios in the 1930s. Bill Peed later changed his name to Bill Peet and went on to a long career with Walt Disney. In the early 1960s, he left Disney and began writing and illustrating children's books. There were three dozen in all, including Bill Peet: An Autobiography (1989), a Caldecott Honor Book and ALA Honor Book. Bill Peet died on May 11, 2002. 

Older brother George enlisted in the U.S. Army in April 1941 and served with a special unit of artists and writers, the Signal Corps Photographic Center, based in Astoria, in Long Island City, New York, and at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. Among the others in the unit were Frank Capra, William Saroyan, Charles Addams, Sam Cobean, Stan Lee, and the writers Ivan Goff, Ben Roberts, and Gerry Davis. After the war, George Peed worked as a commercial artist, apparently in the area of New York and New Jersey. He did the character designs for the animated television series The Mighty Hercules (1963-1964), but it is for his album cover designs for Peter Pan Records that George Peed is known today. It's Christmastime, and so I would like to show some of them. I will close by noting that George Peed's last place of residence was Park Ridge in Bergen County, New Jersey, and that he died on April 18, 2002, less than a month before his brother Bill.

Merry Christmas To All!

Text copyright 2014, 2024 Terence E. Hanley