My buddy Walt Handelsman is retiring. But he's not shy.

What a prince. What a great American editorial cartoonist. What a friend.

I’m actually pretty emotional writing this one.

Walt Handelsman, late of The Advocate in New Oreleans, earlier from Newsday, the New Orleans Times Picayune, and the Scranton Times, is retiring, at the youthful age of 69.

Cartoonists, generally, do not retire. They dial it back bit, but they usually keep on going until they can’t hold a brush and pen anymore.

I admire Walt on every level.

He’s a great, very funny editorial cartoonist. He won the Pulitzer Prize—twice. He was in with me at Tribune Content Agency in national syndication since 1988. I started in 1980. I was 19. My face hadn’t cleared up yet. Seriously.

We talked this morning about the tragic death of a mutual friend, Walter Mahoney, who was last president of Tribune syndicate. Mahoney got us both into syndication, and there was never a moment of tension between Walt and me.

But let me tell you what’s really great about Walt Handelsman.

He is a great human in world of a lot of non-great humans.

We used to hang out together at the AAEC conventions, along with the likes of Steve Kelley, Rob Rogers, Mike Luckovich, and a few others. We were the young guns.

Now we are the old guns.

Walt has experienced the greatest personal tragedies I have ever heard of…and he goes on. I won’t say what they were, but you’d be in a mental hospital if they happened to you. Trust me.

Why is Walt a great human?

First, he is a true friend. He checks in on you. There was a mutual friend of ours who I hadn’t spoken to in 25 years, and neither us can precisely say why. But Walt got us back together, and I am truly grateful for that.

Walt will unabashedly tell you he loves you, that you’re great, that you are deserving, even if you’re not. It’s not an act.

He’s actually like that.

Second, he is one of the funniest people I have ever known, and I have a lot of funny friends. A lot. Walt has a truly remarkable vocal ability, and he can actually imitate a fax machine carrier signal.

One time, Walt tried it on a fax machine, and got it to link up.

True story.

We will call each other and do squelch noises, astronaut voices, Ross Perot impressions (he used to break me up when he’d say, as Ross Perot, “Yew cain’t teach a deer to make a pizza. Yew just cain’t dew it”), and whatever other 1960s media bites we’d come up with.

I sat with Walt at several political conventions. I remember one where I was watching him draw a cartoon that later won the Pulitzer Prize the next year, which kept my eye on the ball. We’d bomb around together, along with other editorial cartoonists, and he’d say, no—yell, “JACKSON! MEET MY BROTHER!”

His brother was Steve Handelsman, who was an NBC News correspondent (he’s also the nicest guy ever). Or he’d yell out to Tim Russert (who looked pretty drunk at the moment), because, of course, he was friends with Tim Russert.

Everyone loves Walt, and that’s not common in our business.

Walt picked up golf, and he is font of golf advice to this day. I think he’s a 12 handicap, and that’s really good for an older dude. Or a younger dude.

Walt was a party animal, and he’d drag us all around New Orleans to hear Zydeco bands, and Walt had to explain what Zydeco was to me.

I’m from Minnesota. I know some polka bands.

I have heard Walt exasperated, but I have never heard him angry. A smile is a permanent fixture on the man’s face, and he’s got the strongest jawline to carry it off. I have never heard him utter an unfair word. He is devoted to his wife Jodie, and his kids, no matter what.

We also shared decades of inside jokes, sounds, noises, and all the rest of the things kids do, who are now old men.

Walt also is passionate about politics, and he is extremely articulate about it. Ask the MAGA folks in New Orleans.

If you met Walt in an airport at the newsstand, he’d be your best friend in three minutes, and you would be proud to know him.

I know I am.

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Hey, YBs! : I just had to get this out. He deserves it. —J.