Reamer Keller

Charles Reamer Keller (January 11, 1905 - January 17, 1994), better known as Reamer Keller, was a popular American cartoonist for a wide variety of newspapers and magazines, so prolific that he often drew 50 cartoons a week and routinely published a thousand cartoons annually for decades.

Born in Virginia between the Massanuttan and Blue Ridge Mountains, Keller grew up at 1919 Baird Avenue in Portsmouth, Ohio, where his father, Harvey F. Keller (1867-1958), was a machinist with the Norfolk & Western Railway shops until his 1940 retirement. The young Reamer Keller honed his art abilities during employment in Portsmouth at the Compton Engraving & Printing Company.

Keller studied architecture at the University of Cincinnati, continuing with that as his major at Ohio State University, where he was a member of the Alpha Rho Chi architectural fraternity and contributed to the school's magazine. After he sold his first cartoon to The Columbus Citizen, he took a job in the newspaper's art department. In addition to a job with The Ohio State Journal, he also worked with architectural firms, with labor gangs and on the Cincinnati suspension bridge. He left Columbus to travel about the country, eventually returning to Portsmouth.

Leaving Ohio in 1930, Keller relocated to Staten Island, began making gag cartoon sales to major New York magazines and married his Brooklyn-born wife in 1934. By 1937, the couple had two children (plus pigeons, chickens, ducks and rabbits). Working under a self-imposed schedule, Keller spent two days at the drawing board and three days making rounds to sell his cartoons. He recalled, "I was always deluged with requests for the original drawing. To an artist this is positive proof that you have produced a good, funny cartoon—one that has been right on target."

He returned to Portsmouth to spend a week with his father in 1946, one of many annual visits. Keller and his wife remodeled their Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey home in 1950. Living in Rumson, New Jersey, during the 1960s and 1970s, the couple sold the Portsmouth family house at 1919 Baird Avenue in 1970. During the 1980s, Keller moved to 4500 Ocean Boulevard in South Palm Beach, Florida. Retiring in the 1990s, he lived in Naples, Florida. He died in Palm Beach in 1994.

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