JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Photographer Rocco Morabito, whose shot of a utility worker saving the life a fellow lineman who had been shocked by a high-voltage wire won a Pulitzer Prize in 1968, died Sunday. He was 88.
Morabito’s health had been declining, and he was in hospice care, The Florida Times-Union reported.
His dramatic photograph, tagged “Kiss of Life” by a Jacksonville Journal copy editor, appeared in newspapers around the world in 1967. The photo showed an apprentice electrical lineman, who had come into contact with a 4,160-volt line, being resuscitated by a fellow lineman as he dangled from the top of the pole.
His Pulitzer Prize was for spot-news photography.
“He was a brilliant, instinctive photographer,” said Charlie Patton, a Times-Union staff writer who worked with Morabito at the Journal in the late 1970s.
Morabito worked his way into photography for the paper following his decorated service as a B-17 ball-turret gunner in World War II.
His famous photo was taken as he was returning from covering a railroad strike. Before shooting the pictures, he used his car radio to tell the paper to call an ambulance.
The lineman, Randall Champion, survived the incident. He died at age 64 in 2002.
Other Deaths
Clifford “Bud” Shank, 82, a flutist and alto saxophonist who worked in both jazz and pop music, died Thursday in Tucson.
A native of Dayton, Ohio, Shank worked with saxophonist Charlie Barnet in North Carolina before moving to California in the 1940s. There, he played with trumpeter Shorty Rogers and then pianist Stan Kenton.
During his career, Shank worked with Sergio Mendes and the Mamas and the Papas. His flute work is heard in the latter’s song “California Dreamin’.”
Richard J. O’Neill, 85, a prominent Democratic activist, died Saturday at his Orange County, Calif., home.
O’Neill served as California Democratic Party chairman from 1979 to 1981, adding to the party’s coffers through fundraising and his own contributions.
The wealth O’Neill shared with the party came from the massive coastal ranch that had been in his family since 1882. One large portion of it became the Camp Pendleton Marine base. Another became the master-planned community of Mission Viejo.
