Gochros in High School. Infrequent contributor, but long time Fortean.
The nature of his Forteanism, though, is unclear.
Herbert B. Gochros was born 5 March 1918 in Bridgeport, Connecticut to Joseph Gochros and the former Lillian Gold. (One source says he was born in Brooklyn; I have not seen a birth certificate.) Joseph was a Russian Jew who had immigrated to America when he was young, under ten. (The surname had many spellings.) In 1920, at the time of the census, he owned a soda shop. Lillian was an immigrant from England; Herbert was their first child. Later, the family had added another son, Rodney, born about 1925. The household also had a boarder in both the 1920 and 1930 census; in each case, it was a Russian immigrant, one who worked as a taylor, another who worked at a novelty shop.
Herbert attended Central High School, in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He went to college—I do not know where—and worked as a teacher while living at home with his family. (Which had grown by another son, Harvey, born about 1932.) Gochros enlisted in the army on 17 March 1941, just after he’d turned 23. I do not know what he did in the service, or how long he was in. At the time he was 5’11”, 196-pounds, and unmarried. Around this time, he copyrighted a couple of songs, at least, with W. O. Harrington, as Herb and Bill: “Looking for a Dream”, “Serenade to a Deb”, “Waiting to Hear From You” (all 1940); “Drop a Jitney in the Juke Box” (1941); and with Florence Friedman: “The Lady is No Lady” (1941).
The nature of his Forteanism, though, is unclear.
Herbert B. Gochros was born 5 March 1918 in Bridgeport, Connecticut to Joseph Gochros and the former Lillian Gold. (One source says he was born in Brooklyn; I have not seen a birth certificate.) Joseph was a Russian Jew who had immigrated to America when he was young, under ten. (The surname had many spellings.) In 1920, at the time of the census, he owned a soda shop. Lillian was an immigrant from England; Herbert was their first child. Later, the family had added another son, Rodney, born about 1925. The household also had a boarder in both the 1920 and 1930 census; in each case, it was a Russian immigrant, one who worked as a taylor, another who worked at a novelty shop.
Herbert attended Central High School, in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He went to college—I do not know where—and worked as a teacher while living at home with his family. (Which had grown by another son, Harvey, born about 1932.) Gochros enlisted in the army on 17 March 1941, just after he’d turned 23. I do not know what he did in the service, or how long he was in. At the time he was 5’11”, 196-pounds, and unmarried. Around this time, he copyrighted a couple of songs, at least, with W. O. Harrington, as Herb and Bill: “Looking for a Dream”, “Serenade to a Deb”, “Waiting to Hear From You” (all 1940); “Drop a Jitney in the Juke Box” (1941); and with Florence Friedman: “The Lady is No Lady” (1941).
Gochros in 1951. Afterwards, Herbert settled in Connecticut and became a writer. He married a woman named Aileen. I am not sure of all the ins-and-outs of his employment history, but he does seem to have made a good career of it. At times, he was associated with comics, and from what I’ve seen it seems fair to say he was a comedy writer, offering jokes and quips and poems. The local newspapers called him a “bon vivant” and “gag writer.” In 1957, the “Sunday Herald” wrote that he was the perennial winner of the national Magazine Cartoon Writers’ Awards, and had that year won Look Magazine’s Annual Award. He also contributed to Playboy magazine and Colliers and the Saturday Evening Post. He had some correspondence with the New Yorker.
From the “Sunday Herald,” 1o September 1950:
“In the old days a man had to build a better mousetrap and the world beat a path to his door. Now all he has to do is buy a television set.”
From the “American Legion Magazine,” August 1952:
LUCKY ME
Tickets on raffles
I buy more than plenty.
“19”’s the winner,
1 always have ‘“20.”
From the “Wall Street Journal,” undated:
“With the increased price of gasoline, the American dream of two cars in every garage is coming true.”
From the “Pottstown Mercury,” 5 January 1970:
“Show me a man getting a hypodermic injection from a cheerful nurse, and I’ll show you a man taking a friendly needling.”
Apparently, a lot of what he wrote ran under somebody else’s name. He sold his gags to cartoonists, who then used them in their work. Charles Addams, for example, bought some of his ideas, which then ran in the New Yorker. This anonymity was not always the case: he had a credit in the 1957 “Cartoon Spice” number 3, for a half-page script “Is Your Spouse a Louse.” In 1970, Hank Ketcham, best known for creating “Dennis the Menace,” restarted his comic “Half-Hitch,” which ran until 1974. Gochros was hired as an assistant and writer on the strip. According to Ketcham, he’d worked with Gochros since his own freelance days.
Gochros was active in jewish organizations and the Red Cross. In the late 1950s, he went on a diet and took up bike riding, shedding some forty to fifty pounds. Aileen was an artist in her own right, a poet and painter. Herb and Aileen divorced at some point, I’m not sure when. In 1990, aged 71, he married Isabel T. Lee, then 72, in Westport, Connecticut.
Herbert B. Gochros died 22 February 1995, aged 76.
*******************
It is possible to speculate on what drew Gochros to the Fortean Society, but it would be nothing beyond speculation. My guess would be that it had to do with the humor—but perhaps that is overdetermined, based on what little I know about him. Fort was an underrated humorist, as was Thayer—his cynicism masked what could sometimes be sharp and witty observations. The piquant writing should have been something that Gochros noticed. Of course, it’s possible he also had developed interests in the weird and unexplained mysteries, I just don’t know.
He seems to have come to Fort and Forteanism relatively late. At least, his first mention in the magazine does not appear until January 1953, which dates his interest to no later than the end of 1952, when he was 34. A number of Forteans were falling away at this time, and even Thayer and Russell were becoming somewhat bored with the Society. There was no big push—of which I am aware—for new members, so it is not clear how Gochros would have found the Society. The years just before or just after World War ii would have been more natural times, and perhaps he did join then, but just started to get mentions in the 1950s.
As is so often with Forteans, there are more questions than answers.
At any rate, his first mention came in Doubt 39 (January 1953) and was just his last name appearing in a paragraph-long list of acknowledgements of members who sent in material; it does tell that, if nothing else, Gochros paid his dues and was an official member. he got a call out later that year, in Doubt 41 (July 1953) . . . but it was also a generic credit in a long list of acknowledgments, again using only his surname. As it happened his final mention was . . . wait for it . . . another generic credit, appearing the very next issue, Doubt 42 (October 1953).
Only once was his name attached to a specific clipping. That also came in Doubt 42. He sent in something on a waterspout in Connecticut. Waterspouts were of interest to Forteans in and of themselves—they were unusual phenomena, if not unexplained; they were also connected to stories about rains of animals, a frequent explanation for how fish or frogs could be sucked up out of a body of water and dropped over some distant area. This one was of special interest to the Fortean Society because it was large, but the recorded wind speed in the area was only 14 miles per hour. Unusual, then.
All of this would suggest that Gochros was at best a minor Fortean. And that may be true. The sum total of his contributions to the Fortean Society can be bracketed in a single year, 1953. A passing phase, then, perhaps. But there is one other piece of data that suggests his interest was more durable than that. His name also appears in an early issue of the International Fortean Organization’s Journal. This is his complete name, and the only reason I was able to track him.
It concerns a story clipped from the papers in September 1972. So Gochros was still on the look out for Fortean data almost twenty years later, when he had been hired to write one of Ketcham’s strips. He had weathered the end of the Fortean Society, heard about the start of the successor Internal Fortean Organization, and joined it. That does not sound like someone with only a passing interest in Forteana. He had to be plugged into he community well enough to hear about the launch of the new magazine, and motivated enough to join and send in material, at least once.
This is the only other bit of Forteana that can be connected to Gochros, along with the story about the waterspout. And like that story it is not concerned with humor or witty sayings, but an unusual phenomena, one not explained well by press reports. The story was about the tunnels near Goshen, Massachusetts. I have not seen the article—it ran in the “Bridgeport Post” on 30 September 1972—but apparently someone suggested that the tunnels might have been connected to the Underground Railroad.” Gochros was skeptical. He asked INFO Journal, “Did runway or underground railway slaves need tunnels ten feet high? Did they ned any kind of tunnel here?” The editors responded, “Good questions.”
It is questions alone that persist.
From the “Sunday Herald,” 1o September 1950:
“In the old days a man had to build a better mousetrap and the world beat a path to his door. Now all he has to do is buy a television set.”
From the “American Legion Magazine,” August 1952:
LUCKY ME
Tickets on raffles
I buy more than plenty.
“19”’s the winner,
1 always have ‘“20.”
From the “Wall Street Journal,” undated:
“With the increased price of gasoline, the American dream of two cars in every garage is coming true.”
From the “Pottstown Mercury,” 5 January 1970:
“Show me a man getting a hypodermic injection from a cheerful nurse, and I’ll show you a man taking a friendly needling.”
Apparently, a lot of what he wrote ran under somebody else’s name. He sold his gags to cartoonists, who then used them in their work. Charles Addams, for example, bought some of his ideas, which then ran in the New Yorker. This anonymity was not always the case: he had a credit in the 1957 “Cartoon Spice” number 3, for a half-page script “Is Your Spouse a Louse.” In 1970, Hank Ketcham, best known for creating “Dennis the Menace,” restarted his comic “Half-Hitch,” which ran until 1974. Gochros was hired as an assistant and writer on the strip. According to Ketcham, he’d worked with Gochros since his own freelance days.
Gochros was active in jewish organizations and the Red Cross. In the late 1950s, he went on a diet and took up bike riding, shedding some forty to fifty pounds. Aileen was an artist in her own right, a poet and painter. Herb and Aileen divorced at some point, I’m not sure when. In 1990, aged 71, he married Isabel T. Lee, then 72, in Westport, Connecticut.
Herbert B. Gochros died 22 February 1995, aged 76.
*******************
It is possible to speculate on what drew Gochros to the Fortean Society, but it would be nothing beyond speculation. My guess would be that it had to do with the humor—but perhaps that is overdetermined, based on what little I know about him. Fort was an underrated humorist, as was Thayer—his cynicism masked what could sometimes be sharp and witty observations. The piquant writing should have been something that Gochros noticed. Of course, it’s possible he also had developed interests in the weird and unexplained mysteries, I just don’t know.
He seems to have come to Fort and Forteanism relatively late. At least, his first mention in the magazine does not appear until January 1953, which dates his interest to no later than the end of 1952, when he was 34. A number of Forteans were falling away at this time, and even Thayer and Russell were becoming somewhat bored with the Society. There was no big push—of which I am aware—for new members, so it is not clear how Gochros would have found the Society. The years just before or just after World War ii would have been more natural times, and perhaps he did join then, but just started to get mentions in the 1950s.
As is so often with Forteans, there are more questions than answers.
At any rate, his first mention came in Doubt 39 (January 1953) and was just his last name appearing in a paragraph-long list of acknowledgements of members who sent in material; it does tell that, if nothing else, Gochros paid his dues and was an official member. he got a call out later that year, in Doubt 41 (July 1953) . . . but it was also a generic credit in a long list of acknowledgments, again using only his surname. As it happened his final mention was . . . wait for it . . . another generic credit, appearing the very next issue, Doubt 42 (October 1953).
Only once was his name attached to a specific clipping. That also came in Doubt 42. He sent in something on a waterspout in Connecticut. Waterspouts were of interest to Forteans in and of themselves—they were unusual phenomena, if not unexplained; they were also connected to stories about rains of animals, a frequent explanation for how fish or frogs could be sucked up out of a body of water and dropped over some distant area. This one was of special interest to the Fortean Society because it was large, but the recorded wind speed in the area was only 14 miles per hour. Unusual, then.
All of this would suggest that Gochros was at best a minor Fortean. And that may be true. The sum total of his contributions to the Fortean Society can be bracketed in a single year, 1953. A passing phase, then, perhaps. But there is one other piece of data that suggests his interest was more durable than that. His name also appears in an early issue of the International Fortean Organization’s Journal. This is his complete name, and the only reason I was able to track him.
It concerns a story clipped from the papers in September 1972. So Gochros was still on the look out for Fortean data almost twenty years later, when he had been hired to write one of Ketcham’s strips. He had weathered the end of the Fortean Society, heard about the start of the successor Internal Fortean Organization, and joined it. That does not sound like someone with only a passing interest in Forteana. He had to be plugged into he community well enough to hear about the launch of the new magazine, and motivated enough to join and send in material, at least once.
This is the only other bit of Forteana that can be connected to Gochros, along with the story about the waterspout. And like that story it is not concerned with humor or witty sayings, but an unusual phenomena, one not explained well by press reports. The story was about the tunnels near Goshen, Massachusetts. I have not seen the article—it ran in the “Bridgeport Post” on 30 September 1972—but apparently someone suggested that the tunnels might have been connected to the Underground Railroad.” Gochros was skeptical. He asked INFO Journal, “Did runway or underground railway slaves need tunnels ten feet high? Did they ned any kind of tunnel here?” The editors responded, “Good questions.”
It is questions alone that persist.
