R – Respiratory Patch 

In 1964, cartoonist Al Capp designed the pink elephant patch for the former Department of Respiratory Therapy as a personal favor to director Dean Crocker, MD. The pink elephant wears a black mask fed by a green oxygen tank over his face and trunk with the resuscitation kit balanced on his tail. 

Al Capp was a cartoonist most famous for his writing and illustration in the satirical, syndicated comic strip Li’l Abner, which he worked on from 1934 to 1977. Born Alfred Gerald Caplin, in 1919 at nine years old, Capp was struck by a trolley car. The accident resulted in having his left leg amputated above the knee. 

Capp entertained and visited disabled children in pediatric hospitals across the country to offer words of sympathy and comfort, as well as artwork. He wrote a letter to a child amputee at Columbus Hospital in 1964.