Bob, Dick, and Harry

 

 

In 1953, when I was an 18-year-old messenger at the Associated Press and a freelance photographer for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a stroke of luck put me on the inauguration stand in Washington, D.C., with a four-by-five Speed Graphic camera in my hands as Dwight D. Eisenhower was sworn in as 34th president of the United States.

The photo editor at the Daily had assigned me to cover the inauguration and had arranged for me to pick up a press pass in Washington. Officials there told me that most of the passes had been given out, but they would see what was left. I was given a pass making me a member of the inaugural party and another admitting me to the inaugural platform. I arrived early and made my way to the stand.

I knew that something had to be wrong, because all the other photographers were stationed in front of the platform. When I tried to leave, though, a Secret Service man stopped me and told me I was where my pass entitled me to be.

 

 

As it turned out, that inaugural ceremony was unusual, as it featured four presidents, not the customary two: Eisenhower, of course, plus the outgoing President Harry S. Truman, former President Herbert Hoover, and Richard M. Nixon, the new vice president, who would become the 37th president 16 years later.

Of the photos I took, one appeared the next day in the Daily, and three more went out on the AP wire. Shortly thereafter, I went to work full-time for the Associated Press; I spent the next half-century as a photographer.

As the years went by, I occasionally covered an event that brought me into contact with one of the men who had been on the platform, and each time, I would take along a print of my photo so that I could have it autographed. In 1961, when former President Truman came to New York City to attend a political dinner celebrating Mayor Robert F. Wagner’s election to a third term, I tried to get my final signature.

Mr. Truman listened while I explained how I had managed to take the picture and how I had obtained the autographs of the other three presidents. But when I asked him to sign the picture, he bristled.

Jabbing at the image of Nixon, he said: “I wouldn’t sign a picture with that son-of-a-bitch Nixon in it. He called me a traitor.” Then, clenching his fist, he growled, “This is what I’d like to do to him.” My camera was primed and I got a second photograph of President Truman, doing what he did best: giving ’em hell.