Fred Lasswell; Cartoonist Drew ‘Snuffy Smith’ Comics

Fred Lasswell, who drew the “Snuffy Smith” comic strip for nearly 60 years, has died at the age of 84.

Lasswell, who died Sunday at his Tampa home of congestive heart failure, continued working until the end, leaving behind 49 “Barney Google and Snuffy Smith” strips in his studio, said his daughter, Patricia Slesigner.

“He was working seven days a week and never stopped,” she said.

Born in Missouri, Lasswell was working as a cartoonist for the Tampa Daily Times when he was discovered by cartoonist Billy De Beck, who in 1919 had created the strip: “Take Barney Google, For Instance.”

The strip originally centered on Google, the pint-sized ne’er-do-well and inveterate horseplayer who became so popular in the 1920s that he was the subject of vaudeville routines and a popular song.

De Beck had moved him to Kentucky and introduced him to Snuffy Smith by the time Lasswell took over the strip when the creator died in 1942. The new cartoonist would focus on Smith, the card-playing, moonshine-brewing family man from the hillbilly town of Hootin’ Holler.

“My family roots are in Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee,” Lasswell said. “So it was natural for me to draw on the kind of people I knew.”

The strip, meanwhile, continued to grow in popularity, and now appears in more than 900 newspapers. King Features Syndicate said it would continue to distribute it.

Lasswell received numerous honors, including the prestigious Reuben, the National Cartoonists Society’s equivalent of the Academy Award, in 1964. In 1984, he received the Elzie Segar Award for outstanding contributions to the art of cartooning.

Other survivors include his wife, Shirley, three sons and a granddaughter.