"Family Circus" cartoonist Bil Keane dies

Keane, who started drawing the one-panel cartoon featuring Billy, Jeffy, Dolly, P.J. and their parents in February 1960, died Tuesday at age 89 at his longtime home in Paradise Valley.

His comic strip is featured in nearly 1,500 newspapers across the country.

Keane's son Jeff said that his father died of congestive heart failure with one of his other sons by his side. All of Keane's five children, nine grandchildren and great-granddaughter were able to visit him last week, Jeff Keane said.

"He said 'I love you' and that's what I said to him, which is a great way to go out," Jeff Keane said of his last conversation with his father.

Jeff Keane has been drawing the cartoon in the last few years after his father's retirement.

Bil Keane said in a 1995 interview that the cartoon had staying power because of its consistency and simplicity. "It's reassuring, I think, to the American public to see the same family." He called comics "the last frontier of good, wholesome family humor and entertainment."

SEE PHOTOSRecent notable deaths

Born in 1922, Keane taught himself to draw in high school in his native Philadelphia.

Around this time, young Bill dropped the second "L" off his name "just to be different."

He worked as a messenger for the Philadelphia Bulletin before serving three years in the Army. He met his wife, Thelma, while serving at a desk job in Australia.

Keane moved to Arizona in 1958 and started a comic about a family much like his own. He and his wife had a daughter, Gayle, and sons Glen, Jeff, Chris and Neal -- one more son than in his cartoon family.

Thelma Keane, the inspiration for the Mommy character, died of Alzheimer's disease in 2008.

"I was portraying the family through my eyes," Bil Keane once said. "Everything that's happened in the strip has happened to me. That's why I have all this white hair at 39 years old."