Who do we thank for the term Meme?

My dad was stationed in Paris during his time “fighting” the Germans during WWII. He was never apologetic when asked about his time serving in the Army because he would boast it was the highlight of his teens. He spoke fondly of the delicious French food, gained an appreciation for the diverse and rich French cheeses, hung at cafes and sipped on table wines; all while trying to meet a nice French gal. One day many years later, while looking through his box of old photos and memorabilia from the war, I came across one of his napkin doodles with a bald-headed man with a big nose looking over a wall. It was the popular image that was seen all over Europe at that time and all over the world called Kilroy. Usually with the words “Kilroy Was Here” next to it. Like many older expressions you see, you think you may know the meaning, but then you do a little research and find that you are completely wrong. I initially believed this expression was originated from the U.S. servicemen, but after a search of the derivation I stumbled upon a word seen and known to many today as MEME. Or “ that which is imitated.” A quick search finds that meme was coined by Richard Dawson in his 1976 book called The Selfish Gene. You could say that Kilroy was the first time a cultural practice or an idea was shared by many across the world.

Who drew Kilroy first? It may have been the creation of British cartoonist George Chatterton in the late 1930s. Known to the Britton’s as Mr. Chad and at some point during the war, American soldiers borrowed Mr. Chad’s image and married it to their own name and phrase, “Kilroy was here.” If the man in the drawing was a variation of Mr. Chad, then where did the name Kilroy come from? The Oxford English Dictionary writes Kilroy off as a mythical person, dozen of real people claimed to be the doodle’s namesake in 1946, when the American Transit Association (ATA) held a radio contest to establish the origin of the phrase. One of them was James J. Kilroy, who worked at the Bethlehem Steel shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts during the war inspecting the work done by others on the tanks and hulls of warships.

As James Kilroy explained to the American Transit Association contest committee:

I started my new job with enthusiasm, carefully surveying every inner bottom and tank before issuing a contract. I was thoroughly upset to find that practically every test leader [the head of a work crew] I met wanted me to go down and look over his job with him, and, when I explained to him that I had already checked the job and could not spare the time to crawl through one of those tanks again, he would accuse me of not having looked the job over.

I was getting sick of of being accused of not looking the jobs over and one day as I came through the manhole of a tank i had just surveyed, I angrily marked with yellow crayon on the tank top, where the tester could see it, ‘Kilroy was here.’

The following day, a test gang leader approached me with a grin on his face and said, ‘I see you looked my job over.’ I nodded in agreement. Kilroy provided the ATA with corroborating statements from men he worked with at the shipyard, and said that he assumed that shipyard workers who had seen his mark and then joined the military took the phrase with them and began writing it in Europe.

Kilroy won the contest and the grand prize which was a full-size trolley street car. (see image) The 12-ton trolley was delivered to Kilroy’s home in Halifax, MA a few days before Christmas, where it was attached to his house and used as living space for six of his nine children.

So, who do we thank for the word meme? Let’s leave it as James J. Kilroy.