Cecil Stoughton, official photographer to the Kennedy White House, died today at age 88. Here's an excerpt from his obituary in the New York Times:
Mr. Stoughton was traveling in the Kennedy motorcade on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. After shots were fired, Mr. Stoughton’s driver raced to Parkland Hospital. As Mr. Stoughton waited outside the operating room, he saw Vice President Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, being escorted from the hospital. He asked an official where they were going.
“The President is going to Washington,” he was told.
“So am I,” Mr. Stoughton replied.
He hitched a ride with a state trooper and made it to Love Field before Air Force One took off. He learned afterward that police officers on the tarmac, seeing his car hurtling toward the plane and fearing another attack, nearly fired on him. Mr. Stoughton climbed into the plane, the only photographer on board. He switched the color film in his Hasselblad camera for a roll of black and white: the wire services could not handle color.
The swearing-in began, and Mr. Stoughton, standing on a couch at the back of the plane, pressed the shutter. Nothing happened. He jiggled his camera — jiggled it hard. It came to life.
He took about 20 shots of the ceremony. He was so close to Jacqueline Kennedy that her bloodstained skirt did not appear in the finished photo. Continuing to shoot, he captured a wrenching image of the Johnsons consoling her, her eyes downcast, dark hair obscuring half her face.
Mr. Stoughton stayed on with the Johnson administration until 1965. In 1967, after retiring from the Army as a major, he became the chief still photographer for the National Park Service.
