Jim McLeod always looked a little like Willie - or was it Joe? - in Bill Mauldin’s "Up Front," the famous cartoon history of World War II as seen through the eyes of two lovable infantrymen, Willie and Joe.

Even with a fresh shave at 4 p.m., he always had a five o’clock shadow. He moved slowly like a guy too long at the front; he was unflappable and unflagging; his dry sense of humor caught you by surprise, always with a slight smile and a twinkle in his eyes.

Jim McLeod, whose teams won 299 games and lost only 83 at Hickman High School from 1957 through the 1971-72 season, was a real life Willie - or was it Joe? He came by his looks honestly.

A 1941 graduate of Esther High School, he started his post-secondary education at Flat River Junior College but joined the Army in 1942 and wound up as a machine gunner in the mud and rain and snow and cold of the yearlong, brutal, deadly Italian campaign. He once lived in the same clothes for 64 straight days.

He earned a Bronze Star and nine months in the hospital recovering from pneumonia, which later eventually cost him his life.

When Ol’ Clark burst upon the local scene in 1956 as a student reporter for the Columbia Missourian, two of the first folks I met were Jim and Kay McLeod. Jim - "Mac" to his friends - was the basketball coach at Jefferson Junior High, and Kay was a physical education teacher at the same school.

A year later, Jim moved to Hickman to replace Bob Murrey and began a 15-year career before health problems sent him to the dry air of El Paso, Texas. As the Kewpies’ head coach, he led Hickman to its last state high school basketball championship in 1962 and to second place in 1968 and third place in 1969.

The McLeods left Columbia for El Paso after the 1971-72 season and have been all but forgotten. Thus, it was a great treat recently to catch up with Kay when she stopped in Columbia to visit with old neighbors Margaret and Ken Niemeyer.

Kay and Jim met as seniors at Southeast Missouri State University in late 1947. Jim was a basketball player and pole-vaulter at Esther High and had played middle infield at Washington State University during a military assignment before his Italian service.

He was good enough on the diamond that he had a chance to turn professional had World War II not intervened.

Kay, a 1944 graduate of Cape Girardeau Central High, graduated from SEMO in the spring of 1948. Jim, who had coached DeSoto to a 10-10 record during the 1947-48 season, graduated at the end of summer school. A week later, they were in Columbia, where Kay taught at Jeff Junior while Jim finished a master’s degree at MU. He joined Kay in 1949 as the coach of all sports and physical education teacher.

His coaching record at JJHS of 84-28 catapulted him to the Hickman job in time for the 1957-58 season.

Ol’ Clark was there, reporter’s pad in hand, when Mac’s Kewpies beat Fayette 67-25 in the first round of the Boonville Tournament en route to a 28-2 record. The McLeod Era was under way.

Mac’s influence on his students and players can be seen daily in Columbia. Ken Ash and Phil Driskill were outstanding players for Mac and have returned to coach the Kewpies. Ash took the coaching reins when Mac retired. Now Ken’s son, Ken Jr., is the Kewpies’ head man.

From Ron Cox and George Hulett in 1957-58 to the days of Tony Edwards, Rick Hardiman and Pete "The Feet" Stemmons in the early 1970s, Hickman’s rosters were filled with academic and athletic Hall of Famers.

The lungs, damaged three decades earlier in Italy, and Mac’s lifelong battle with asthma, sent the McLeods to El Paso, where Mac taught elementary PE and coached junior high and junior varsity basketball and baseball for two years. He died in 1975.

Kay has remained in El Paso and has enjoyed a long career as a coach and art teacher. Girls’ athletics were unknown at Jeff Junior and West Junior High, where Kay transferred when West opened in 1962.

She enjoyed her first coaching experience at El Paso’s Jefferson High School as a member of coaching staffs in volleyball, basketball, track and softball.

In 1975, she left coaching to teach art, long her favorite classroom subject. Kay added a master’s in art from SEMO in 1981 and was chair of the art department at Jefferson High until she retired in 2002.

Though no longer in the classroom, Kay remains active as a judge of school art contests and as an examiner for the International Baccalaureate Arts Program.

She enjoys working as a police officer two days a week at El Paso’s West Side Regional Command Center and is deeply involved with church activities. Life is good at age 80.

My wife asked me: "How many readers under 50 will recognize ‘Up Front’ or Bill Mauldin?’ " Good question. How many younger than 50 know of the contributions of Kay and Jim McLeod?

A suggestion: Read "Up Front" and "Back Home." Then tell me, if you knew Jim McLeod, whether he was Willie or Joe.

Thanks for dropping by, Kay, and reminding us of the educational gifts the McLeods gave our community.