 daily strip from 1983 until DiPreta's retirement in 2000.Born July 9, 1921, in Stamford, Connecticut, to a family that included brothers Joe and Leonard, Tony DiPreta grew up during the Great Depression, during which his father had little or no work and his mother sewed in a sweat shop for $7 a week.He decided while in junior high school that he would pursue an art career after reading in the local newspaper that cartoonist H. T. Webster made $50,000 a year.