LOS OSOS, California (AP) _ Animator Art Clokey, who created the claymation duo “Davey and Goliath” for the  Lutheran Church, has died in California at the age of 88.  Clokey was hired to animate the children’s series about a boy, Davey, and his talking dog, Goliath, by church officials who had seen the Gumby character he created in the 1950s.  Davey and Goliath’s escapades always ended with a moral lesson. They were broadcast throughout the 1960s and  1970s until TV stations were released from their public service obligations.

In a 1995 interview with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America posted on the “Davey and Goliath” Web site, Clokey called the series “a sincere effort to give children something that would be good for them.” Clokey said, “God is love, and we’re being instruments of that love when we give the children these stories that they identify with in a wholesome fashion.”