Cartoonist Cy Long, 24, Killed by Lightning While Playing Baseball, July 2, 1922

Cy Long Killed by Lightning. . . Young Cartoonist of Newton Taken While Playing Ball. . . Was Just Introducing Negro Comic, “Mose Bones”—Funeral at Wilmington Monday

Thomas Cyril Long, better known, especially among newspaper men of the south and east as “Cy” Long, creator of the new comic cartoon strip of negro characters, including “Mose Bones,” was killed by lightning while participating in a baseball game at or near Newton, N.C., his home town, Saturday afternoon, according to information received from Newton by telephone.

The body will be taken to Wilmington, N.C., former home of Mr. Long’s mother, where funeral services will be held Monday morning, according to information received in Charlotte.

Mr. Long was about 24 years of age, was the only child of Mr. and Mrs. Luther F. Long of Newton, his father being a well-known insurance man of that town. Deceased was an alumnus of Catholic University at Washington, to which institution he went after completing the course at Belmont College, Belmont, N.C. He was a young man of high ambitions, energetic, of pleasing address and manner, and very popular among those who knew him.

Only the past week he returned to his home at Newton for a few days after completing a tour of the southeast and as far north as New York city, introducing his new comic, to which he had devoted most of his time and thought during recent months and on which he had been working several years. He was enthusiastic in his belief that his comic, the first in the country based upon the dialect and character of the southern darkey, would prove a great success, and he had received much encouragement from newspaper men throughout the southeast and in the larger cities north.

He had made arrangements with the publisher at Cumberland, Md, to prepare his cartoons for his newspaper clients and was just conducting a campaign to place his comic in the larger papers of the south and east generally. He was in The Observer office Thursday night and had a conversation with the managing editor about his cartoon which had been recently published at intervals in this paper. The Observer has a number of comic strips on hand for publication.

The first news of Mr. Long’s death to reach Charlotte came by long distance telephone in a message from his father to C.A. Williams Jr. of this city, a close personal friend and former school mate of deceased.

From the front page of The Charlotte Sunday Observer, July 2, 1922