We also had Morris "Bucky" Pierson. Later I would use his nickname for Captain America's sidekick......
Bucky was my age, on my basketball team.....There were rumors that the family name was a shortened version of Piersonsky or Piersonovitch. Lots of families dropped or shortened their European names when they emigrated to America. Pierson was a good American name, and that's how Bucky was registered in school, so that's who he was.
Those years were the heart of the Great Depression. A guy had to scrounge around to make a couple of nickels. There was one summer vacation where Bucky and I lost track of each other for about three weeks. Then he showed up at my house "to say goodbye." His face was almost unrecognizable, as he tried to smile through the scroungiest black beard I had ever seen. He explained that he had a summer gig. He had hired out to play for the House of David, a travelling basketball team. All players were required to wear beards– the longer, the better.
"The House of David," I said. "What's that, some kind of religious thing?"
"I have no idea," he said. "It's like... employment."
Bucky came from an observant Jewish family, and a job was a job. We would miss him on the Sabbath when he organized the crap games in the back alley of the synagogue. But the summer flew by, school started. Bucky was back, shaved, and everything was normal.
It's not as easy as one would suspect, tagging a new comic book character with a solid moniker. The name "Bucky" was perfect for Captain America's crime-fighting kid buddy. Over the years I've read accounts trying to crack the code associated with naming characters. One annoying analysis associated Cap's Bucky with a "buck negro," and insisted it was politically incorrect. It's nonsense, and it's insulting.
Bucky was just a good kid on my basketball team. And a spunky crime-fighter.
Joe Simon: My Life in Comic Books
