'Lum and Abner' is a registered trademark, used by permission of Chester Lauck, Jr.

Any regular visitor to First Arkansas News knows that we’ve been working on getting a project off the ground — one that will yield one Lum and Abner comic strip per week.

Well, that project is off the ground. Chester Lauck Jr. (i.e., Lum’s son) has generously given us permission to publish the comic strip. We’ll update the strips here and will post a new one every Sunday.

Donnie Pitchford, all-around good guy and president of the National Lum and Abner Society, is the artist on this project and the strip will be driven by adaptations of scripts for which there are no surviving audio recordings. While both Pitchford and First Arkansas News founder/publisher Ethan C. Nobles will write a story or two, it is a primary goal to preserve a good number of those great scripts so that people can enjoy them now just like they did when those shows were originally aired. When it comes to Lum and Abner, how on earth could one beat the stories that were originally penned by Chet Lauck and Tuffy Goff — a couple of Mena boys who developed a couple of characters that have entertained fans for 80 years?

If you want to read more about Lum and Abner and why they are such an integral part of Arkansas’ culture, click here. Also, make sure to take a minute or two and look through the below list of sponsors. They are the individuals and organizations that provided the initial funding necessary to get this project off the ground. We can’t thank them enough for their support and hope they all enjoy the strip. If you’d like to join their numbers, just click the “donate” link on the right hand sidebar and you, too, will get a link and a genuine “thank you” from us at First Arkansas News.

Chet Lauck and Tuffy Goff Platinum Circle ($400)

Pine Ridge Planetarium Club
($200)

Lon and Kathy Stucker Appreciation Society
($100)

Pine Ridge Possums Booster Club
($50)

Hendle Rumbaut supports Charlton Spotlight magazine

Mr. and Mrs. John A. Knuppel

Pine Ridge Library Club
($25)

Katherine Adams

Robert Babione

Bill and Treva Cox

Robert Flood

Jo Ann Gill

Janet McMurrin

JD Weeks

Lum and Abner Appreciation League
(Less than $25)

Elizabeth Campbell
First Arkansas News
Jeff Guin
Dallas Lacy
Life’s Pleasues, LLC
Shelli Russell

Want to get involved and be listed as a sponsor? Fantastic! Just click on the “Donate” link the right sidebar to send some cash in through PayPal. If you want a banner, either submit one or get in touch with Ethan C. Nobles at ethan@firstarkansasnews.net and he’ll design one for you (drop him an email if you have any questions at all, in fact).

What do you get for an annual donation? In addition to our gratitude, those who give $25 or more will get either a link or a banner ad from our high traffic site for 12 months. Also, you’ll get that warm, fuzzy feeling that comes from helping preserve a bit of old time radio history in general and Arkansas history in particular.