My Role As a Photo Journalist
By James Donahue
The Speed Graphic was the standard camera for journalists in the field for many years; and for good reason. It was a magnificent camera, well constructed, and it rarely failed. The only drawback was its big size and the fact that it only shot two pictures in a slide pack. We had to always carry a heavy bag over the shoulder filled with more film packs, flash bulbs and spare batteries for the flash gun attached to the side of the camera.
During my years as a bureau reporter at South Haven, Michigan, I did as much camera work as I did writing for my employer. Consequently, the camera led me into some interesting adventures. I carried it with me everywhere. It rode in the trunk of my car so was within easy reach whenever I came upon something unusual and that I thought might make a good news photograph.
Some of the more famous people I photographed during those years included:
--Dr. Christiaan Barnard, South African cardiac surgeon who performed the world’s first successful human-to-human heart transplant, when he spoke at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.
--Julian Bond, outspoken social activist, leader in the American Civil Rights Movement, Georgia state politician, professor and writer, and later chairman of the NAACP. Bond also was a guest speaker at Hope College.
--Walter Reuther, well known labor union leader involved with the United Automobile Workers who spoke during a state meeting of the UAW held at Fidelman’s Resort at South Haven.
--Frank Fitzsimmons, another powerful labor leader and acting president of the Teamsters Union following the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa. Fitzsimmons also appeared during one of at least two state meetings at Fidelman’s Resort.
--Michigan Governor William Milliken who was a guest of the South Haven Centennial Commission to mark the grand opening of the city’s new marina on the Black River. As commission chairman, I was privileged to have breakfast with Governor Milliken.
--Michigan Attorney General Frank Kelley, who also came as a speaker at a political event at Fidelman’s Resort, and later attended a gathering at the South Haven mayor’s home. My wife Doris and I were invited to both events.
In addition to the coming and going of famous faces and the dashing off to car wrecks, fires and other disasters, there were at least three times when I shot images that I believe would have made some of the world’s best photographers proud.
One was the scene of a house fire somewhere in Allegan County, near the little community of Ganges, in early December of about 1964. I heard that an entire family of about 12 escaped alive but the house was gutted by the fire that destroyed everything they had. I drove to the scene the next day and found that family, still at the fire scene, rummaging through the still smoldering ruins and hoping to find something to salvage. They told me they were destitute, with no place to go and having only the clothes they were wearing when the fire broke out. Some of the children were not wearing shoes. I lined that family up like stair steps in front of their burned-out house and shot my picture. That heart-wrenching image appeared on our front page the following day with my story.
The day I shot that picture it had not yet snowed. The ground was barren, the sky was grey with clouds, and it was the most dismal scene one could imagine. The next day the area was struck with a terrible snow storm. It began in the morning while I was making my police rounds. I remember that I left the house in my regular shoes and by the time I got back to file my stories, the snowfall was so heavy I was wishing I had worn boots. I made a mistake of putting our car in the garage. The snow kept falling all that day and into the next. So much snow fell the whole city was paralyzed until we could get dug out. I had the task of digging out my long driveway to get my car back to the road again.
During the storm I wondered what happened to that Ganges family. I should not have worried too much. My picture and attached story stirred so much compassion in the hearts of our readers that the moment the road to Ganges was opened by the snow plows, a caravan of cars and pickup trucks converged on that place. I think the Red Cross even got involved and helped the family find a new place to live. The people donated furniture, clothes, bedding, dishes and food. It was an amazing follow up story and one that I was glad to write. That the story ran on the day of the big snow, and just a week or two before Christmas, probably had an even bigger impact.
Another memorable photograph involved a large ship that got stuck in the turnaround basin on the Black River. South Haven was a seaport where full-size ships occasionally called with cargo for at least one warehouse business still operating on the riverfront. In earlier times South Haven was a more active port of call for passenger ships operating mostly between there and Chicago. The city was a lively resort town during those years. The boats would come as far as the city’s lift bridge linking the two halves of the city, unload cargo, and then get turned around in a large dug-out basin before heading back out into Lake Michigan.
On this particular day a very large freighter got partially turned in the basin, but then became stuck in the mud. When I heard about it I drove to the scene, grabbed my camera, walked out on the bridge and shot my picture. There it was. The stern end of this giant ship was pushed almost up against the north bank of the river, and the deck clearly tilted to port. It was obvious that the hull and possibly even the propeller and rudder were buried in mud. My picture was dramatic. My editor, a former Navy commander, loved it. He ran that picture on the front page. He made it so large the picture almost covered half the page.
My third memorable photograph involved a labor strike at one of the South Haven factories. It had been a long drawn-out strike. One day I received a tip by an unidentified telephone caller that the company was going to try to run scab workers through the picket line and that that there was going to be trouble. I grabbed my camera and was on the scene early that cold morning, waiting for something to happen. Sure enough, a convoy of cars and pickup trucks filled with potential scab workers arrived and attempted to push its way through the strike line and into the plant. The strikers gathered at the gate and put up a strong resistance. When one of the cars attempted to push its way through a guy with a baseball bat smashed the windshield, shattering it all over the occupants of the car. I was shooting pictures as events unfolded and just happened to catch an image of that guy with his bat the moment it hit the windshield. The picture even caught the glass beginning to shatter under the force of the strike. I was working in semi-darkness at the time and there was so much activity going on I was literally shooting blind toward whatever was occurring. Catching that image was either a very lucky or a very unlucky break, depending on how you want to look at it.
That picture made our front page the next day. It also landed me in court a few months later when the occupants of the car, some of whom claimed injuries from the flying glass, filed a damage suit against the man who swung the bat. My picture was crucial to the case since it clearly identified the man swinging the bat and clearly showed him breaking the car window. In effect, my picture caught him in the act of causing injury to the plaintiffs in this case.
Bringing news reporters and photographers into court to testify in damage lawsuits is a tricky business because we are (or at least were in my years as a reporter) sworn to impartiality. We tried to stay out of having to ever testify on one side or the other in court cases, and never gave away the names of our confidential news sources. That was a code we had to live by or lose our ability to stay on top of news events as they were going on. Consequently, when I answered a subpoena to appear in court to testify in that case, I was accompanied by a lawyer hired by the newspaper. Thus I was advised on what I could and could not say under oath in that court. Fortunately, all that I was asked was whether I took the picture that appeared in our newspaper, and if I observed the defendant when he swung the bat. I could honestly say that I took the picture, but because of the dim light I did not see what went on until after the film was developed.
My office in South Haven was located about 25 miles north of Benton Harbor and my employer, The News Palladium, a major daily newspaper serving a large section of Southwest Michigan.
Consequently most of my film was shipped from South Haven to Benton Harbor by courier. This was a man who worked in an automobile body shop about a block away from the newspaper. We prepared large black metal boxes with straps around them that just rode on the seat of his car as he drove to and from his job each day. He was paid for every box he carried. It was a nice arrangement for the courier and it saved me a lot of driving time. I had pictures to send almost every day of the week.
The photography department made large glossy eight by ten-inch prints of just about every picture I shot. The negatives were placed on file at the office and the prints, even the ones we used, were shipped back to me in the returned boxes. I suppose they thought it was better to let me have them instead of throwing the pictures away. I decided that it would be a good public relations project to give the prints as gifts to the people in the pictures, or those who were involved in the stories linked to the pictures. Consequently a lot of great glossy prints went to the police and the fire departments.
The South Haven Fire Department was a very active place. The department was comprised of a staff of full-time men who lived on the second floor of the fire station. There also was a staff of volunteer fire fighters. The routine was that when a fire call came in, the drivers scrambled down the fire pole, opened the big doors and drove to the fire scene with the fire trucks. One of the men stayed behind to answer possible second calls. His first duty was to summon the volunteers and send them to the fire. By the time the volunteers arrived at the scene the fire trucks were already in place and the drivers were rolling out hoses and hooking them up to the hydrants. It was a pretty efficient operation.
After I had delivered numerous pictures of some of the fires the department had battled, the fire chief, Les Olmstead, asked me one day if I would like to go on staff as a volunteer fire fighter and act as an official photographer for the department. He agreed to set up a darkroom in a store room at the fire hall so I would have the freedom to shoot a larger variety of images at each fire. During my time with the department, I also was trained to fight fires. It was a great arrangement. I had personal radio calls to every fire, got there in time to get dramatic pictures of fire and emergency scenes, and was able to send my best pictures off to the News Palladium. I also was paid by both the newspaper and the city every time I was called to a fire. Eventually I sold a lot of prints to insurance adjusters. It was a fantastic arrangement.
My task at every structure fire was to shoot pictures of the building from every angle the moment I was at the scent. After this I put the camera back in the car and jumped in my fire-fighting gear, grabbed a hose and joined the fire-fighting crew. Once the fire was out and the men were rolling up the hoses, Chief Olmstead, the captains and I walked through what was left of the burned structure. Olmstead would study the scene and determine the origin of the fire, then ask me to take pictures. These were the pictures sought by the insurance companies, especially in arson cases. My pictures also were projected on a screen during monthly crew meetings as we discussed the blaze, talked about the cause and how we could improve our service.
While I was on his staff Olmstead also asked me to accompany him on tours through the city’s larger, older buildings, taking pictures that were also shown during those monthly meetings. The chief’s idea was to familiarize the fire fighters with these buildings so that they understood what to expect if those buildings ever burned.
After leaving South Haven I worked on newspapers that sent photographers with me when I was on assignment. I still did some photo work but was given smaller and lighter cameras to work with.
By James Donahue
The Speed Graphic was the standard camera for journalists in the field for many years; and for good reason. It was a magnificent camera, well constructed, and it rarely failed. The only drawback was its big size and the fact that it only shot two pictures in a slide pack. We had to always carry a heavy bag over the shoulder filled with more film packs, flash bulbs and spare batteries for the flash gun attached to the side of the camera.
During my years as a bureau reporter at South Haven, Michigan, I did as much camera work as I did writing for my employer. Consequently, the camera led me into some interesting adventures. I carried it with me everywhere. It rode in the trunk of my car so was within easy reach whenever I came upon something unusual and that I thought might make a good news photograph.
Some of the more famous people I photographed during those years included:
--Dr. Christiaan Barnard, South African cardiac surgeon who performed the world’s first successful human-to-human heart transplant, when he spoke at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.
--Julian Bond, outspoken social activist, leader in the American Civil Rights Movement, Georgia state politician, professor and writer, and later chairman of the NAACP. Bond also was a guest speaker at Hope College.
--Walter Reuther, well known labor union leader involved with the United Automobile Workers who spoke during a state meeting of the UAW held at Fidelman’s Resort at South Haven.
--Frank Fitzsimmons, another powerful labor leader and acting president of the Teamsters Union following the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa. Fitzsimmons also appeared during one of at least two state meetings at Fidelman’s Resort.
--Michigan Governor William Milliken who was a guest of the South Haven Centennial Commission to mark the grand opening of the city’s new marina on the Black River. As commission chairman, I was privileged to have breakfast with Governor Milliken.
--Michigan Attorney General Frank Kelley, who also came as a speaker at a political event at Fidelman’s Resort, and later attended a gathering at the South Haven mayor’s home. My wife Doris and I were invited to both events.
In addition to the coming and going of famous faces and the dashing off to car wrecks, fires and other disasters, there were at least three times when I shot images that I believe would have made some of the world’s best photographers proud.
One was the scene of a house fire somewhere in Allegan County, near the little community of Ganges, in early December of about 1964. I heard that an entire family of about 12 escaped alive but the house was gutted by the fire that destroyed everything they had. I drove to the scene the next day and found that family, still at the fire scene, rummaging through the still smoldering ruins and hoping to find something to salvage. They told me they were destitute, with no place to go and having only the clothes they were wearing when the fire broke out. Some of the children were not wearing shoes. I lined that family up like stair steps in front of their burned-out house and shot my picture. That heart-wrenching image appeared on our front page the following day with my story.
The day I shot that picture it had not yet snowed. The ground was barren, the sky was grey with clouds, and it was the most dismal scene one could imagine. The next day the area was struck with a terrible snow storm. It began in the morning while I was making my police rounds. I remember that I left the house in my regular shoes and by the time I got back to file my stories, the snowfall was so heavy I was wishing I had worn boots. I made a mistake of putting our car in the garage. The snow kept falling all that day and into the next. So much snow fell the whole city was paralyzed until we could get dug out. I had the task of digging out my long driveway to get my car back to the road again.
During the storm I wondered what happened to that Ganges family. I should not have worried too much. My picture and attached story stirred so much compassion in the hearts of our readers that the moment the road to Ganges was opened by the snow plows, a caravan of cars and pickup trucks converged on that place. I think the Red Cross even got involved and helped the family find a new place to live. The people donated furniture, clothes, bedding, dishes and food. It was an amazing follow up story and one that I was glad to write. That the story ran on the day of the big snow, and just a week or two before Christmas, probably had an even bigger impact.
Another memorable photograph involved a large ship that got stuck in the turnaround basin on the Black River. South Haven was a seaport where full-size ships occasionally called with cargo for at least one warehouse business still operating on the riverfront. In earlier times South Haven was a more active port of call for passenger ships operating mostly between there and Chicago. The city was a lively resort town during those years. The boats would come as far as the city’s lift bridge linking the two halves of the city, unload cargo, and then get turned around in a large dug-out basin before heading back out into Lake Michigan.
On this particular day a very large freighter got partially turned in the basin, but then became stuck in the mud. When I heard about it I drove to the scene, grabbed my camera, walked out on the bridge and shot my picture. There it was. The stern end of this giant ship was pushed almost up against the north bank of the river, and the deck clearly tilted to port. It was obvious that the hull and possibly even the propeller and rudder were buried in mud. My picture was dramatic. My editor, a former Navy commander, loved it. He ran that picture on the front page. He made it so large the picture almost covered half the page.
My third memorable photograph involved a labor strike at one of the South Haven factories. It had been a long drawn-out strike. One day I received a tip by an unidentified telephone caller that the company was going to try to run scab workers through the picket line and that that there was going to be trouble. I grabbed my camera and was on the scene early that cold morning, waiting for something to happen. Sure enough, a convoy of cars and pickup trucks filled with potential scab workers arrived and attempted to push its way through the strike line and into the plant. The strikers gathered at the gate and put up a strong resistance. When one of the cars attempted to push its way through a guy with a baseball bat smashed the windshield, shattering it all over the occupants of the car. I was shooting pictures as events unfolded and just happened to catch an image of that guy with his bat the moment it hit the windshield. The picture even caught the glass beginning to shatter under the force of the strike. I was working in semi-darkness at the time and there was so much activity going on I was literally shooting blind toward whatever was occurring. Catching that image was either a very lucky or a very unlucky break, depending on how you want to look at it.
That picture made our front page the next day. It also landed me in court a few months later when the occupants of the car, some of whom claimed injuries from the flying glass, filed a damage suit against the man who swung the bat. My picture was crucial to the case since it clearly identified the man swinging the bat and clearly showed him breaking the car window. In effect, my picture caught him in the act of causing injury to the plaintiffs in this case.
Bringing news reporters and photographers into court to testify in damage lawsuits is a tricky business because we are (or at least were in my years as a reporter) sworn to impartiality. We tried to stay out of having to ever testify on one side or the other in court cases, and never gave away the names of our confidential news sources. That was a code we had to live by or lose our ability to stay on top of news events as they were going on. Consequently, when I answered a subpoena to appear in court to testify in that case, I was accompanied by a lawyer hired by the newspaper. Thus I was advised on what I could and could not say under oath in that court. Fortunately, all that I was asked was whether I took the picture that appeared in our newspaper, and if I observed the defendant when he swung the bat. I could honestly say that I took the picture, but because of the dim light I did not see what went on until after the film was developed.
My office in South Haven was located about 25 miles north of Benton Harbor and my employer, The News Palladium, a major daily newspaper serving a large section of Southwest Michigan.
Consequently most of my film was shipped from South Haven to Benton Harbor by courier. This was a man who worked in an automobile body shop about a block away from the newspaper. We prepared large black metal boxes with straps around them that just rode on the seat of his car as he drove to and from his job each day. He was paid for every box he carried. It was a nice arrangement for the courier and it saved me a lot of driving time. I had pictures to send almost every day of the week.
The photography department made large glossy eight by ten-inch prints of just about every picture I shot. The negatives were placed on file at the office and the prints, even the ones we used, were shipped back to me in the returned boxes. I suppose they thought it was better to let me have them instead of throwing the pictures away. I decided that it would be a good public relations project to give the prints as gifts to the people in the pictures, or those who were involved in the stories linked to the pictures. Consequently a lot of great glossy prints went to the police and the fire departments.
The South Haven Fire Department was a very active place. The department was comprised of a staff of full-time men who lived on the second floor of the fire station. There also was a staff of volunteer fire fighters. The routine was that when a fire call came in, the drivers scrambled down the fire pole, opened the big doors and drove to the fire scene with the fire trucks. One of the men stayed behind to answer possible second calls. His first duty was to summon the volunteers and send them to the fire. By the time the volunteers arrived at the scene the fire trucks were already in place and the drivers were rolling out hoses and hooking them up to the hydrants. It was a pretty efficient operation.
After I had delivered numerous pictures of some of the fires the department had battled, the fire chief, Les Olmstead, asked me one day if I would like to go on staff as a volunteer fire fighter and act as an official photographer for the department. He agreed to set up a darkroom in a store room at the fire hall so I would have the freedom to shoot a larger variety of images at each fire. During my time with the department, I also was trained to fight fires. It was a great arrangement. I had personal radio calls to every fire, got there in time to get dramatic pictures of fire and emergency scenes, and was able to send my best pictures off to the News Palladium. I also was paid by both the newspaper and the city every time I was called to a fire. Eventually I sold a lot of prints to insurance adjusters. It was a fantastic arrangement.
My task at every structure fire was to shoot pictures of the building from every angle the moment I was at the scent. After this I put the camera back in the car and jumped in my fire-fighting gear, grabbed a hose and joined the fire-fighting crew. Once the fire was out and the men were rolling up the hoses, Chief Olmstead, the captains and I walked through what was left of the burned structure. Olmstead would study the scene and determine the origin of the fire, then ask me to take pictures. These were the pictures sought by the insurance companies, especially in arson cases. My pictures also were projected on a screen during monthly crew meetings as we discussed the blaze, talked about the cause and how we could improve our service.
While I was on his staff Olmstead also asked me to accompany him on tours through the city’s larger, older buildings, taking pictures that were also shown during those monthly meetings. The chief’s idea was to familiarize the fire fighters with these buildings so that they understood what to expect if those buildings ever burned.
After leaving South Haven I worked on newspapers that sent photographers with me when I was on assignment. I still did some photo work but was given smaller and lighter cameras to work with.