It was the fourth year of the Great Depression (1929 –41) and Bill thought he had found the answer to all his problems. Bill selected the Landon School in Cleveland, Ohio, because its advertisement noted that some practitioners of this art made as much as a hundred thousand dollars a year. While thumbing through a copy of Popular Mechanics magazine at the age of thirteen, he came across a group of ads for cartoonists' correspondence schools. Cartooningīill enjoyed drawing pictures from an early age. When the Mauldins' marriage ended in divorce, Bill and Sid moved back to Phoenix together to finish their high school education. From mining in Parral, Chihuahua, Mexico, to homesteading in the desert west of Phoenix, Arizona, the outcome was always the same and the family would return home to Mountain Park.

Sidney Mauldin decided to try other ventures and moved his family to a variety of western locations. They enjoyed a happy childhood, but money was always tight. Bill and his brother, Sidney Junior (Sid), lived on the mountain apple farm with their parents and had their maternal grandparents close by.

Katrina Bemis and Sidney Mauldin proudly named their second son after his paternal grandfather, William Henry Mauldin. William Henry Mauldin was born on October 29, 1921, on the family farm at Mountain Park, near Santa Fe in New Mexico. This exposure allowed him to tell the story of the lives of soldiers to people on the home front and made America smile when it needed to most. His popular cartoons were reprinted and widely circulated in U.S.

Mauldin interpreted World War II for the soldiers, also called GIs, as well as for Americans at home. They mirrored the lives of soldiers in the European theater as they encountered the blunders and efficiency, the irritations and comradeship, of life in the army. Mauldin's cartoon characters, Willie and Joe, slogged their way through battle-scarred Europe surviving the enemy and the elements with their humor intact. He was considered a great reporter and was also credited with being a positive influence on morale for the armed services during the war. The Pulitzer Prize-winning artist portrayed World War II's (1939 –45) grim reality, laced with his own brand of humor, and in so doing he immortalized the American serviceman. Bill Mauldin was one of the twentieth century's outstanding editorial cartoonists.

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