clipped from: findarticles.com BEFORE Popeye the Sailor, Olive Oyl and Wimpy were the stars of a beloved comic strip, they walked the streets of this little town where their creator grew up.
Popeye's real-life alter ego, according to locals, was Frank Fiegel, a one-eyed, pipe-smoking man with a penchant for fistfights. Dora Paskel was unusually tall and thin and wore a bun at the nape of her neck. And theater owner J. William Schuchert so loved hamburgers that he would send his employees out between performances to buy them.
Segar did not visit Chester much after he left in the early 1920s. By the time he died in 1938, Popeye was appearing in more than 500 newspapers.
The opera house now holds the Spinach Can Collectibles store and the Popeye Museum.
"These were just our friends and family," said Ernie Schuchert. "We're just happy the rest of the world knows them, too."