WATERLOO - A longtime Waterloo educator and syndicated cartoonist who championed an innovative racial integration project here has died.

Will P. "Bill" Knowlton, who once called Grant Elementary School's Bridgeway project his greatest accomplishment, died Friday at Covenant Medical Center. He was 90.

A World War II veteran and University of Iowa graduate, Knowlton was a teacher and principal in the Waterloo Schools from 1948 to 1978, serving at Sloane Wallace, East Junior, Lowell, Whittier, Emerson and Edison schools.

He became principal at Grant in 1969 and, during a time of racial unrest, instituted Bridgeway and served there until retirement.

The previously all-black Grant became a voluntary open enrollment school with a 50-50 black-white racial mix.

Knowlton "was the driving force behind the Bridgeway project," said former school board member and State Rep. Don Hanson, the district's personnel director at the time Bridgeway was instituted.

"Bill was very selective about the teachers he wanted" for Bridgeway, Hanson said. "He chose them because they were people who wanted to be there.

"Bill had recruited white families that wished to have an experience with black kids," Hanson said. "He was very successful in recruiting," with 235 white students enrolled initially.

"Many people in the community now were students at Bridgeway and grew up in an atmosphere that was pretty good," Hanson said.

"We worked hard to make kids feel good about themselves," Knowlton said in a 1981 Courier interview. "If you're culturally disadvantaged, it doesn't matter if you're black or white."

Courier Editor Gene Thorne first published Knowlton's cartoons in 1956. The educator's school-humor strip "Grimrose Grammar" was syndicated by the New York Herald Tribune in 1957 and appeared in 40 papers nationwide. He had five humor books published and The Courier ran his "Laffbreak" cartoon for 23 years.

Services for Knowlton are scheduled for Monday at St. Edward Catholic Church.

Contact Pat Kinney at (319) 291-1426 or Pat.Kinney@wcfcourier.com