13 Facts About Hilda Terry

Theresa Hilda D'Alessio, better known as Hilda Terry, was an American cartoonist who created the comic strip Teena.

Hilda Terry admired the sports cartoons of Willard Mullin, wanted to become a sports cartoonist and spent time sketching at sports events.

Hilda Terry arrived in New York when she was 17 and spent two years working as a waitress at Schrafft's.

Hilda Terry was signed by King Features Syndicate to create a feature comic strip, It's A Girl's Life, which would soon become Teena, the strip for which she is most well-known.

Hilda Terry won a contest and a $100 war bond for the best "Waste-not" cartoon sponsored by the Office of War Information and the War Production Board in 1943.

Hilda Terry led an active life during the late 1940s, serving as a Camp Fire guardian, a Blue Bird leader, a Horizon Club advisor and an American Youth Hosteler, once leading a group of girls on a ten-day bicycle trip through New England.

Hilda Terry drew portraits of ballplayers for baseball stadium scoreboards in the early 1970s and subsequently became a pioneer in early computer animation.

Hilda Terry traveled from city to city to create her giant animated portraits of major league players and team mascots.

Hilda Terry was the animation artist for the Kansas City Royals Baseball Club.

Hilda Terry wrote about this double life and her approach to art in her self-published autobiography, Strange Bod Fellows.

Hilda Terry received the Animation Award from the National Cartoonists Society in 1979.

Hilda Terry was elected to the Friends of Lulu Women Cartoonists Hall of Fame in 2001.

Hilda Terry saw it as an archival repository, as well as a place to showcase her husband's paintings.