Miscellaneous, Homer D. Owens

Who's Who in Bainbridge

Homer D. Owens

Bainbridge News & Republican, Mar. 31, 1938

 

Cartoonist, lawyer, golfer, connoisseur of old furniture and an interesting conversationalist...This best describes Homer D. Owens, village clerk, and for many years prominent village barrister.

 

Born in Unadilla [Otsego Co.,  NY], Mr. Owens moved to Bainbridge at the age of eight with his parents and grandparents, who established a hardware store here.  Moving from place to place, Mr. Owens estimates that he can claim at least 18 local residences that were home to him.

 

While attending the Bainbridge Academy, he went to work in the Sled Factory, an old Bainbridge industry that occupied the site where the Casein Company now stands.  Deserting his job of painting scenes and figures on sleds, he went to New York where he enrolled in the Art Students League and he set to work investigating the city, as well as learning the fine points of drawing.

 

Going to work for the famed Arthur Brisbane on the New York Evening World, he drew "everything that came along," including cartoons, portraits, accidents and battles.  Transferring with Brisbane, he joined the Hearst organization and entered the art department of the New York American.  Mr. Owens explained that the importance and necessity of a large art department at that time was due to the impossibility of making newspaper cuts directly from photographs.  Instead all pictures were drawn and from these drawings, the cuts were made.  Mr. Owens was with the "American" when the historic blowing up of the Maine occurred during the Spanish-American War.

 

Entering the Remington Business School as a preparation for his law training, he studied shorthand and typewriting.  The first week after his graduation from this institution he had five jobs in one week, but finally became associated with the Lawyers' Title Guaranty and Trust Company where he remained for eight years.  At the same time, he attended and graduated from the New York Law School and then passed the bar examinations.

 

In response to queries concerning his avocations of which he has many, he said his hobbies were "anything that doesn't take too much effort."  This statement is misleading for he is often seen chasing a ball around the golf course.  Much of his leisure is spent "puttering" in his shop, and tracking down and refinishing fine specimens of antique furniture.