Thomas A. 'Tad' Dorgan

Thomas "Tad" Aloysius Dorgan was born on 29 April, 1877, at San Francisco, the son of Thomas J. and Anna Dorgan. His father worked as a laundryman and later as a teamster in the Bay Area. Dorgan began working in the mid 1890s as a cartoonist for the San Francisco Bulletin. In 1904 he joined the staff of the New York Evening Journal as a cartoonist and sports writer. Soon his cartoons and sports columns were being picked up by the Hearst wire service and published nationwide and abroad. While at the Evening Journal Dorgan was instrumental in advancing the career of fellow sports writer, Charles E. van Loan. Through his wit and creative use of the English language, Dorgan became one of the most beloved sports journalists of his day. He was famous for assigning many sports celebrities with ingenious nicknames and for originating some of the most popular slang phrases of all time. Dorgan was thought to have been the first to use slang terms like: "Twenty-Three Skidoo", "He's a Hard-Boiled Egg", "Dumb Dora", "Finale Hopper", "Solid Ivory", "Drug Store Cowboy", "Cake-Eater", "The Cat's Meow" "Nickel Nurse", "There's Nobody Home", "You Tell 'Em the First Hundred Years are the Hardest", Dumb-Bell", 'As Busy as a One-Armed Paper-Hanger with Hives" and others. Tad Dorgan died on 2 May, 1929, at his home in Great Neck, Long Island. He had been suffering from heart disease for several years and even though he spent most of that that time bedridden he was able to continue working up to a few days before his death. The end came not long after he came down with pneumonia.