About Sargent Shriver...

I guess I'm old enough now that, like every Washington journalist, I feel the need to reminisce about some important figure when he dies. It proves we're important too, you see, because we actually knew him ...

Recently, it was Sargent Shriver, once "dashing and handsome," the vigorous expediter of JFK's noble goals through the Peace Corps, now 95 and suffering from Alzheimer's. I remember him from the mid 1990s.

I had just covered a ceremony marking the anniversary of John Kennedy's assassination. Every year, a delegation of Kennedys and others would visit the grave in Arlington, spend a contemplative moment looking into the eternal flame, and then move on with their day. At a discreet and respectful distance, photographers were allowed to document the little ceremony. Needless to say, Shriver was a regular, and he was there that day.

We went through our motions -- the Kennedys at the grave, the photographers silently making our pictures -- and then all climbed into our cars and drove back into the city. Of course, packing up gear and all, I left later than the participants, so I was somewhat surprised after I crossed the bridge and started down Constitution Avenue to see ... Sargent Shriver. He was standing in the road, next to his car after a minor fender bender.

There's a moment as a journalist and especially as a photographer (because we can't recover the picture by getting on the phone and collecting descriptions after the fact) when you see something like this. I guess you could call it news, or perhaps a feature -- something that the NY Daily News might put on Page Six, showing that the famous and important are just like us. I though about pulling off, jumping out and getting a picture. But then I realized what I saw there was a befuddled old man, standing there with that hopeless look that the elderly can have, that look when the speed and complication of life has overwhelmed them. And on that day of all days...

No, I just couldn't do it. I drove on to the bureau, dropped my film and didn't mention it, even after word came down later in the day that he had indeed had a minor accident. I guess after 15 years, I can't get in trouble for that now...

You've gotta' check this out...

I've been working on a story for "News Photographer" magazine about the recent lifting of the photo coverage of US military dead returning to Dover Air Force Base.  There's a lot more history and background to the subject than you might think; like, for example, did you know that we only really started returning the bodies of US soldiers as a matter of course -- in other words, immediately shipping the dead back, rather than burying them where they fell and straightening it all out when the war was over -- during the Korean War?

At any rate, as an example of earlier procedures, I'm using the return of the first Unknown Soldier -- the one from World War I -- as an example of what was done after that war, and I've used the account of that from the AP articles by Kirke L. Simpson, which won the Pulitzer in 1922.

Lately, I keep sending people to look at those articles (most easily available at http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/wwi-unk.htm).  Man, this is writing.  I mean, real writing, the kind of writing that makes you just want to quit trying to do it, or maybe try harder...