Wilbur Elsea ’50 took up his second career as an artist after 40 years as an advertising executive — and with, to Shockers anyway, his most beloved artistic creation already under his belt: WuShock.
“One of our projects back in the fall of 1949 was to design a decal using the shock of wheat that represented ‘Wheatshockers,’ the school nickname,” Elsea explained in 1992. As a University of Wichita design student, he drew a muscled-up shock of wheat leaning on, as he said, “the biggest, meanest scythe with the sharpest blade I could imagine.”
Sans scythe, and with an updated look or two, WuShock remains Wichita State’s mascot.
After his college graduation, Elsea employed his talent in graphic design to excel in advertising. He co-ran the Wichita-based Quillen & Elsea agency from 1962 until 1988, when he picked up his brushes to paint award-winning watercolors of landscapes and cityscapes, garden scenes and architectural studies.
In 2002, the artist told a Wichita Eagle reporter, “I’ve never painted a painting that I’m completely satisfied with. But I’ve painted an awful lot of paintings where a little piece of it is as good as I can paint.” Wilbur Elsea died July 29, 2014, in Wichita.
