Jack Armstrong, and Frank Meriwell before
him, seem to have no counterpart today on the airwaves. “Jack Armstrong,
the All-American Boy” was once presented afternoons, right after school,
by “Wheaties – Breakfast of Champions,” during the thirties and early
forties. No more than an animated ideal, he often inspired cynical jokes,
but the name of this Wheaties-eating hero certainly became part of the
language, frequently as a kind of sarcastic description for someone too
square or goody-goody, in the language of the time. Some have thought
Jack’s name might have been suggested by the real-life bully Jack
Armstrong, who lost the legendary wrestling match with young Abe Lincoln
and later became his friend. But it appears that General Mills (Wheaties)
executive Sammy Gale had roomed with a real Jack Armstrong in college and
decided to use his name for the program’s hero because it seemed to convey
“all-American virtues of courage, a sense of humor, and the championing of
ideals.” Jack Lawrence Armstrong, the real Jack Armstrong, the son of a
retired British Army officer, moved to the U.S. from Canada at the age of
four and later received a civil engineering degree from the University of
Minnesota. He was a much-decorated army air force officer during World War
II and later served on the Atomic Energy Commission and worked for the
Apollo and Gemini space programs. He died in 1985, aged 74.