Funeral services for Pulitzer prize-winning cartoonist Doug Marlette were held Saturday at Walnut Grove United Methodist Church in Hurdle Mills, N.C. Marlette was killed Tuesday when the car he was riding in left a wet highway and struck a tree near Holly Springs, Miss. He was 57.

Marlette was born in 1949, in Greensboro, N.C., but moved with his family in 1962 to Laurel, where he attended D.U. Maddox Junior High and R.H. Watkins High School. His father was in the United States Marines, and the family moved to Sanford, Fla., before Marlette finished high school in Laurel.

“We were buddies when we were in junior high and high school,” said Dr. Steve Ellis of Laurel. “We met in junior high and meshed real well. We hung out together a lot in high school, and had a lot of laughs together.”

Ellis remembers Marlette “doodling a lot in high school. He would draw funny cartoons and we’d laugh about those. He was blessed with such immense wit and a wonderful sense of humor, and he could relate that so well through his drawings.” He said some of Marlette’s drawings appeared in the Watkins school newspaper.

“After he moved to Florida, he sent me some of the cartoons he was doing for the newspaper there,” Ellis said. “They were mostly sports-related cartoons about the local teams. He came to Laurel several years back doing research on his second book, and stayed with us. I gave him the old cartoons he had sent me.”

Ellis said Marlette’s sense of humor and a “Southernized” way of life showed through in “Kudzu,” Marlette’s widely syndicated comic strip. “He was able to draw on his wit and humor,” he said. “There was never anything malicious about the cartoons he drew in high school. I guess that was before he started drawing cartoons of politicians.”

Marlette had been employed by the Tulsa (Okla.) World since last year. He won the Pulitzer in 1988 for his editorial cartooning at both the Charlotte Observer and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. He previously worked at New York Newsday and the Tallahassee (Fla.) Democrat.

Marlette was on his way to Oxford Tuesday, where he was working with a high school group that was doing a musical version of “Kudzu.” The driver of the vehicle was John Davenport, the director of the Oxford High School theatrical department. He was treated at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Oxford and released.

Marlette’s survivors include his wife, Melinda Hartley Marlette; a son, Jackson, who is studying art in France; a brother, Chris Marlette and wife Peggy of Sanford; and a sister, Marianne Marlette and husband Terry Neal of Mooresville, N.C.