Willie to Skeeter to John

Because ten-year-old Willie Sprague quarantined and the only magazine mother would let him read was the Yot Companion, which Willie considered "namby-pamby." Willie's devoted uncle, childless Griffith Ogden Ellis, thought up the more virile American Boy and began editing it in Detroit in 1899. Editor Ellis printed red-blooded features and fiction,* kept editing his magazine for a schoolboy Willie while Willie grew to manhood. The War killed Willie Sprague at 27.

After Willie's death Editor Ellis made up an imaginary boy to edit his magazine for: Skeeter Bennet, a high-school sophomore 15 1/2 years old, five feet four inches tall, weight 114 pounds. With 285,000 Skeeters reading The American Boy Editor Ellis bought out Youth's Companion in 1929.

Last week 69-year-old Griffith Ellis sold his interest in the magazine he had edited so consistently for 40 years, went to Arizona for a vacation. Purchaser was his business manager, Elmer Presley Grierson, whom he had been schooling to succeed him since a few months after Grierson graduated from University of Michigan in 1913. Like his mentor, Publisher Grierson is devoted to boys, likes them redblooded. His son, John, is just 15.

*The American Boy's most famed fiction character is Marcus Aurelius Fortunatus Tidd, who first appeared in 1913 while his creator, Clarence Budington Kelland, was managing editor. A Mark Tidd serial is still running in the magazine. Mark Tidd now, as in 1913, is 15.

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