After graduation, Ted attended Oxford university’s Lincoln College for a short time, studying to be an English professor, but ended up dropping out after a year. This decision was encouraged by Helen Palmer, a fellow Lincoln student and Ted’s future wife, who had noticed his doodles in class and told him that he should pursue art rather than a professorship. After sitting through a two hour lecture concerning the punctuation in King Lear, Ted was inclined to agree with Helen, and he quit.

In 1927, Ted returned to his childhood home in Springfield, where he continued to draw and write. He also began to send his cartoons and writings to every single magazine and newspaper editor in New York. After six months of hearing nothing in return for his efforts, Ted received a letter from The Saturday Evening Post and a check for $25 . . . one of his cartoons was going to be published! The sale boosted his confidence enough to take the final plunge and move to New York.

Once in the city, Ted landed a job at Judge magazine for a salary of $75 a week, an amount that was often paid with due bills. One memorable “paycheck” consisted of 100 cartons of shaving cream. Judge was the beginning of what would be Ted’s biggest break yet . . . the advertising campaign with Standard Oil that would last seventeen years, all because of one cartoon that appeared in Judge.