Subseries III.L. National 4-H Calendar Program Art, 1945, 1948-1955, 1957-1966, 1968-1971, 1973-1975, 1978, 1983, 1991

According to a report on the National 4-H Calendar Program prepared for the ECOP Subcommittee on 4-H Club Work in April, 1962, the first known record of an authorization for a 4-H Club calendar is a letter dated November 2, 1936 from C. W. Warburton, Director of Extension Work in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, authorizing the Thomas D. Murphy Company, Red Oak, Iowa, to use the 4-H name and emblem on calendars for sale to local sponsors. The first commercial 4-H calendar seems to have been sold by the Murphy Company in 1938 for hanging in 1939.

While the Thomas D. Murphy Company had approval from the federal Extension Office to produce calendars in the late 1930s, it is believed that this effort was primarily a local effort within the state of Iowa and probably ended when the war started.

4-H calendars following the war regained new interest and the arrangements for the printing of an annual 4-H calendar received approval of the Committee on Organization and Policy of the Land-Grant Colleges and State directors of Extension, to be conducted with the cooperation of the National Committee on Boys and Girls Club Work of Chicago. The announcement statement explained that the production of a calendar would:

Gain prestige for the 4-H movement.

Bring 4-H activities to the attention of the general public.

Increase membership through a widened knowledge of what 4-H Clubs do.

Establish a royalty fund to assist in further development of the 4-H program. Ten percent of gross sales would go toward purchase and development of the National 4-H Club Center located just outside Washington, D.C.

This interest in 4-H calendars following the war was initiated by Brown & Biglelow of St. Paul, Minnesota which began production of 4-H calendars in 1948 for distribution in 1949, operating through a contract with the National Committee on Boys and Girls Club Work. It became the National Committee's responsibility to assist Brown & Bigelow in the production of a 4-H calendar line which would appropriately reflect and serve the Extension youth program.

These Brown & Bigelow 4-H calendars had a circulation of nearly a half million the first year and combined calendar sales exceeding a million and a half by the second year. The first year's royalties were over $25,000. (For use of the name and emblem, all authorized calendar companies agreed to pay a 10 percent royalty on the sales of the 4-H calendars for the development of the National 4-H Center. During the first decade, between 1949 and 1959, $377,000. was made available for the rebuilding and maintenance of the 4-H Center in Washington, D.C.

In addition to Brown & Bigelow and the Murphy Company, other calendar companies joined the National 4-H Calendar Program producing different annual calendars in their respective print shops. Shaw-Barton, Inc., Coshocton, Ohio, was authorized to manufacture 4-H calendars on April 15, 1948; Gerlach-Barklow Co., Joliet, Illinois, authorized on July 23, 1946; Gettier-Montanye, Inc., Glyndon, Maryland, authorized on February 3, 1947; and Custom-Cal Co., Atlanta, Georgia, authorized on December 17, 1954.

Some of these companies received servicing of the 4-H calendar program from the National Committee on Boys and Girls Club Work (National 4-H Service Committee) while others received similar servicing from the National 4-H Club Foundation.

In addition to this listing, there were many local firms that printed some type of 4-H calendar at the local level, and some non-commercial calendars were produced from time to time.

The calendar companies during these years, particularly Shaw-Barton and Brown & Bigelow, were marketing several different types of calendars, all with the same annual image agreed upon with the Extension Service. Both companies were offering large wall calendars with the art image and a monthly pad at the bottom in three different sizes - approximately 11" x 23", 16" x 33" and 22" x 45". They described these calendars as being for school and business hang-ups. They also offered a smaller version of the wall calendar where the image was not printed on the calendar stock but "tipped" or glued on to the stock, and with a smaller monthly pad at the bottom... this version was for home hang-ups. Also a 4-H Record Calendar and a Memory Calendar or month-by-month pocket record were both offered in various versions depending upon the year. So although when we think about the history of the National 4-H Calendar Program, our image of the large wall calendar may be what we envision, the 4-H calendar program was much broader, catering to a variety of interests and needs of the 4-H member, 4-H leader, 4-H family, county agent and local businesses.

In the early years of 4-H calendar history, there were no regulations to guide manufacturers in producing calendars that were appropriate for the 4-H program. Furthermore, little help was provided by the Extension Service to mold calendar advertising into an effective public relations tool for 4-H.

This was remedied in April, 1953, when regulations were adopted governing appropriate use of the 4-H name and emblem on calendars. They were adopted February 19, 1955.

Several calendar companies produced national 4-H calendars over the years. During the 1960s, at least four companies - Brown and Bigelow, Gettier-Montanye, Inc., Thos. D. Murphy Co., and Shaw-Barton - were competing for the 4-H calendar market, all offering their own versions of 4-H calendars authorized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Calendar companies involved in the National 4-H Calendar Program were among the largest calendar-producing companies in America. A brief history of the companies participating in this program follows:

The Thomas D. Murphy Co. As the promotional business took off during the late 1800s, people continued to look for new ways to advertise their products. In Red Oak, Iowa, Thomas Murphy and Edward Osborne are believed to be the first creators of a calendar that featured a work of art. As newspaper men, they were constantly looking to profit from their printing presses after the news had already been printed; after seeing a watercolor painting of the local courthouse, Osborne thought he could use the image to make his calendars more appealing. They reprinted the painting and then surrounded it with advertisements. When the centerpiece was completed, they attached a calendar to it and forever changed the aesthetics of promotional products. The Thomas D. Murphy Co's line of 4-H calendars didn't vary a great deal from this original concept.

You might say, what's the big deal? It's only calendar art. However, some of the most celebrated artists in America started out as calendar artists. Landscape painter Thomas Moran and Frederic Remington, as well as Charles M. Russell, were among Murphy's artists in their early careers. Later generations of calendar artists included Maxwell Parrish, Hy Hintermeister and Rolf Armstrong.

It is believed that most of the calendar art at the Thomas D. Murphy Co. was destroyed, however a few pieces of calendar art from the company were sold at public auction in New York City in 2002, some bringing thousands of dollars each.

The Thomas D. Murphy Co. closed some years ago, however many of the company records were transferred to the Red Oak Public Library.

Brown & Bigelow, Inc. Started in St. Paul, Minnesota, Brown & Bigelow was one of the earliest and largest calendar companies - known for great-looking art by contract artists such as Maxfield Parrish, Norman Rockwell, C. M. Coolidge, Gil Elvgren and Zoe Mozert. Herbert H. Bigelow in 1896 sold and produced his first calendar order - a one-color cardboard calendar with a picture of George Washington - for a St. Paul coal and wood company. Boy Scout calendars and 4-H calendars were two of the top lines of calendars produced by B & B. The company was also known for their classic line of pin-up calendars, including those distributed in early years by Coca-Cola. These are some of the most highly sought after calendars today by calendar collectors.

Brown & Bigelow is still in business as a provider of promotional products and corporate merchandise services, calendars being only a small part of their offerings.

Shaw-Barton One of the largest calendar companies in the country, Shaw-Barton, located in Coshocton, Ohio, began in business in 1940, although parent companies included W. W. Shaw & Co., the earliest advertising novelty business in the city, starting in 1884, and Jasper Meeks Company, equally an early Coshocton advertising novelty company, had long histories. Although Shaw-Barton offered a strong line of calendars, the company was equally strong in many other types of specialty printing. It was Shaw-Barton that the National 4-H Service Committee contracted with when they needed a printer for the popular Mulligan Stew television series comicbook which became the largest selling manual in 4-H's history. It is believed that Shaw-Barton may no longer be in business.

Gerlach-Barklow Calendar Company Manufacturers of art calendars in Joliet, Illinois, Gerlach-Barklow was first authorized by Extension to use the 4-H name and emblem in calendar production on July 23, 1946. The company was started in 1907 by Theodore R. Gerlach, Edward J. Barklow, and K. H. Gerlach. Over the next decade, the company quickly grew into one of the largest calendar and advertising companies in America and like other calendar companies, Gerlach-Barklow made use of many of the prominent American artists of the day for their calendar art. Zula Kenyon, one of the most successful artists in the U.S. during the early 20th century produced over 250 calendar prints for Gerlach-Barklow. Adelaide Hiebel, a friend of Kenyons, also produced many pieces of art for the company, establishing herself as one of the finest female artists of the era while working with Gerlach-Barklow. There is little documented history on this company's production of 4-H calendars other than the fact that they had authorization to use the name and emblem. Gerlach-Barklow Calendar Company was merged with Shaw-Barton, Inc. In 1959.

Gettier-Montanye, Inc. Located in Glyndon, Maryland, Gettier-Montanye, Inc. has been in operation since 1922 and still is in business as a Baltimore-area advertising specialty company dealing mostly in shirts, outerwear and other clothing products, backpacks, medical scrubs and similar items, plus an extended line of holiday greeting cards. They no longer are in the calendar business with the exception of calendar greeting cards.

Custom-Cal Co. The Custom-Cal Co. of Atlanta, Georgia, received authorization from the Federal Extension Office to use the 4-H name and emblem on 4-H calendars on December 17, 1954. No documentation has been found to determine the 4-H calendar production efforts of this company.

The Colson Company The Colson Company of Paris, Illinois is another of the large calendar production companies in America. Started in 1892 by Usher Osborn Colson and his wife, Ada, as a family-operated company, their son Gordon Colson became president of the company following his return from World War II. He brought with him an army buddy by the name of Jay Kaiserman, who became vice president. Kaiserman was the chief liaison for 4-H until into the 1980s. The company by this time had been sold a couple of times and was eventually purchased by John and Cynthia Jedd in the mid-1970s. They continued to run the company, along with being chief liaison to 4-H, until the plant in Paris closed in the mid-1990s. The name was eventually sold and continues as a marketing specialty company. It is believed that The Colson Company was never an official supplier of calendars as part of the National 4-H Calendar Program, although they may well have made calendars for 4-H groups at the local and state levels, as many 4-H alumni insist they purchased their calendars from the Colson Company. The Colson Company also was a major calendar provider for many of the large 4-H donor corporations. The Colson Company was the primary printer and distributor of most of the national 4-H literature - members manuals and leaders guides - developed during the 1960's, 70's and 80's.

Douglass Crockwell