So good ole Stubby Currence was mentioned in the New York Times a little while back in an opinion piece by Erin McKean titled “The Wise Words of Maya Angelou. Or Someone, Anyway.”

The author, the chief executive and founder of the online dictionary Wordnik.com, was writing about a new Maya Angelou postage stamp which attributes this quote to Angelou:

A bird doesn’t sing because he has an answer, it sings because he has a song.

But it was in fact written by children’s book writer Joan Walsh Anglund. 

McKean goes to to use Stubby as another example of possible misattribution for the master Mark Twain:

A favorite Twainism-that-isn’t is “The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work,” which might be the work of a 1930s newspaper columnist named Stubby Currence, but is more likely a variation of an older, anonymous joke.

Quite the mystery! I guess only Stubby would know for sure. And keeping company with the New York Times, Mark Twain and Maya Angelou sounds about right for Stubby.

Wishing all dads a very Happy Father’s Day. I’m missing The Dad a lot today, but he’s always in my heart.

~Melissa