For those dyed-in-the wool Hardy Boys fans, this may interest you...

This text is copied verbatim from a story published at least 30 years ago in the Mobile (Alabama) Press-Register. Keep this in mind when you read the text. I imagine that the people named in it are likely deceased by now, however the article is interesting just the same.

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Hardy Boys Books Featured Artist's Sons On the Covers

Mississippi man says posing for their father was 'no big deal' then

Associated PressGAUTIER, Miss – Most boys growing up in the 1950s and 1960s cut their literary teeth on the Hardy Boys mystery books, which chronicled the adventures of brothers Joe and Frank and their detective father.If anyone judged those books by the cover, it was William Gillies' art that hooked them. And it was Gillies' sons, Bill, of D'Iberville, Mississippi and Sheldon, who posed for many of the scenes – hiding behind a rock near the shore, or speeding across a lake in a powerboat. The brother posed in the mid-1950s for photographs that their father later used as cover illustrations. At the time, it was no big deal.“To me, it wasn't a big thing back then,” Bill said at a recent showing of his father's work at the Gautier (Mississippi) Public Library. “It's just what my dad did for a living.”Bill and his brother posed for about three years. Bill was 11 when he started.“He would sit us in chairs and say, 'don't move.' Then he'd come over and move a chin, or my arm,” he said. “He took a lot of pictures and he would paint in the background later.”Gillies, who also designed the Gillies Gothic style of lettering, started his career in an advertising agency in 1937. He found out that he could do better on his own.He now lives in Hilton Head, S.C. where at 82, he plays tennis three days a week and paints portraits of tennis players with their pets.The Gillies grew up in rural upstate Pound Ridge, N.Y.Bill served in the Air Force where he met his wife, Sheila.“My roots grew here,” said Bill, who now works for the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Pascagoula.His mother, Mary Agnes, died in 1974. She was a model who posed for the Nancy Drew series and in the early 1940s for Colliers Magazine covers. She also appeared in a 1940s Ipana toothpaste commercial. Bill was the youngster in the scene shooting arrows.“I read some of the books so long ago that I don't remember what they were about,” he said. “I want to read them now. It's kind of late in life, but I need to.”The stories follow the Hardy brothers as they went about solving crimes and mysteries, usually beating their father to the clues.His father had to read some them, Bill saiid.“I'm sure he read some of them,” he said. “You don't do that many covers without getting curious.”Among the titles Gillies illustrated: “The Secret of the Caves,” “The Yellow Feather Mystery” and “The Wailing Siren.”A California attorney and collector is organizing a gathering in September for other collectors and two artists who did cover illustrations. Gillies plans to attend.“It's like all paintings,” Bill said. “You don't think about them until years later and say, 'Wow, that's worth something now.'”