“I am Popeye the sailor man. ...,” he sang. My brother Bobby doesn’t remember him singing, but he does recall Uncle Jack drawing something for him on a napkin.


“I wish I would have kept it,’’ Bobby lamented recently.


You see, Uncle Jack was the voice of Popeye, as well as an animation artist. He was married to my great-aunt, Virginia Carroll (my grandfather’s sister). They lived in New York City and were visiting my grandparents, who lived near us.


I looked up his 1984 obituary in the New York Times, and found out Uncle Jack also did the voices of Wimpy, Poopdeck Pappy and Popeye’s nephews. He recorded 220 “Popeye” cartoons in less than a year, when King Features Syndicate put it on TV, the Times reported. He also came up with story ideas and wrote dialogue for some of the cartoons.


His was also the voice of all of the characters in 240 “Felix the Cat” cartoons, according to the Times.


You can imagine, their visit to our neck of the woods was exhilarating to us.


It didn’t matter that that was the only time we recall meeting the guy. This was bragging fodder of epic proportions for kids. (And I guess it is obvious with this column; I am still bragging).


I remember I had to drag friends into my house for my dad to confirm I was not making it up.


Before she died a couple of years ago, I got a chance to see Aunt Virginia, by then widowed, at an extended-family gathering in New Jersey.


As an elderly woman, she was still beautiful, diminutive with big brown eyes (black Irish side of the family). When I was little, I thought she was Olive Oyl, because she had dark hair.


I told her how thrilled it was that our great-uncle was the voice of Popeye and how it helped sustain me ( I don’t know about my sister and brother) through some rough times.


You see, we three survived the travails of a broken home.

But when I look back, I see we had a lot going for us. We lived in a small town with people who looked after all of the kids.


We were in a small Catholic school with the same classmates we started out with in first grade. Yeah, the nuns could be mean, but at least we had some fear instilled in us to behave, compared to no discipline at all.


We all had a work ethic and held jobs at very young ages.


We had our problems and, of course, were damaged by our crumbled family. We occasionally got into trouble and often lost confidence and didn’t persevere in school as we should have.


To be sure, I like to think those aforementioned safety nets saved us. And of course, I also like to think: how could we not have come through. After all, we were related to Popeye.


We all three ate our “spinach,” literally and figuratively and got enough muscle to transcend and fend off the Brutuses in our lives.


I didn’t know you as well as I would have liked; but thanks, Uncle Jack and Aunt Virginia, for giving me (us) someone to look up to in dark times.


And now, for some good Popeye wisdom: “... I got a lotta muscle and I only gots one eye. And I’ll never hurt nobodys and I’ll never tell a lie. Top to me bottom and me bottom to me top. That’s the way it is ‘til the day that I drop, what am I?


“I yam what I yam.”




Patricia Poist is a staff writer for the Living section. Write to her at: ppoist@lnpnews.com. blog comments powered by Disqus