Biographical sketch of George Mosho, 1930-2007
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My father, George Mosho (1930-2007), was an incredibly gifted man who could do anything he put his mind to except for auto repairs. If our car had gas and four good tires and still didn’t move, it was broken and in dire need of an auto mechanic. Everything else he could do and did. Dad was a craftsman. He created furniture, household fixtures, checkered gun stocks, engraved powder horns, and many of my childhood toys that I still have today in his basement woodshop.
After graduating high school in East Pittsburgh, PA, he entered the Marines where he was found to be a natural marksman at Parris Island. From there he was stationed at the US Naval Academy as a marksmanship instructor for the midshipmen until the outbreak of the Korean Conflict. During the war, he carved and painted a very small Nativity set from wood scraps that we proudly display over 70 years later each Christmas.
Returning home to his wife after the war he found a job as a night shift janitor at Westinghouse Electric Corporation. As he made the rounds each night, he took pleasure in drawing orthographic sketches of all of the large industrial machinery on the work floor and essentially creating a catalog of all the Westinghouse machines. His work was so professional that once seen by the engineering staff, they arranged for my Father to attend night school and eventually become an Industrial Engineer, a career he would continue until his retirement.
My father had grown up without a dad and he wanted badly to give me part of himself as I grew up. He heard that parents read fairy tales to their children each night and he wanted to make that a bonding experience for both of us. However, he had no clue what a fairy tale was as he had never been read to as a child. Somehow, he mistakenly obtained a copy of Greek Mythology that had no illustrations and thought that these were fairy tales. As he read from this text, he would draw elaborate figures of armored men with swords and shields, Bellerophon on his winged horse Pegasus, the Medusa with her hair of coiled vipers, and Poseidon wielding a large trident, all for the benefit of connecting with his very small boy. [I still see each and every one of those images in my mind although sadly none exist today.]
After my leaving home for college, I believe that my father still felt the need to connect with me. Mostly he wrote from work during lunchtime at Westinghouse. Many of my letters were written on graph paper or stenographer tablet sheets. I would write him about “Seniors and their Knobs”, popcorn poppers, “radiator-grilled” grilled cheese sandwich salesmen, and other crazy happenings at The Citadel as well as the cockroaches that seemed to be everywhere. He then surprised me by writing back turning my words into his funny cartoons. His main creations were the comic duo “Salt and Pepper”, two cockroaches, one of whom was the “Old Salt” Senior, and the other the young “peppery” Freshman/Knob. Their name obviously came from one of the Citadel uniforms worn for parades, inspections, and other events. There were many more cartoons than what I have offered to date. Several, unfortunately, are lost, but I am currently hopeful that I can find others and forward them in the future.