HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA.- Photographer Paul Vathis, 77, died. He was born on October 18, 1925 in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. He was an Associated Press photographer for 56 years. In 1946 he began his career at the Associated Press in Philadelphia. He got the Pulitzer Prize  in 1962 for an image of President John F. Kennedy and former President Dwight D. Eisenhower walking together at Camp David after the Bay of Pigs invasion. Vathis also took a photograph of Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point basketball game in 1962. He also photographed the 1987 suicide at a news conference of R. Budd Dwyer, Pennsylvania state treasurer at the time. Dwyer had been convicted of taking a bribe. He covered the Three Mile Island nuclear power accident in 1979. Paul Vathis has photographed a pope, a queen and heads of state the world over. But he is most proud of the Pulitzer Prize-winning shot of John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower at Camp David. "I remember the exact moment," he said. "I quickly raised my long lens and shot." At first, his editors at The Associated Press rejected the picture because Vathis had photographed the two presidents from behind. The editors relented, and the picture moved over the wires.

 

Vathis learned his trade aboard a World War II bomber: Part of his job as tail gunner was to photograph whatever the aircraft had just bombed. After the war, Vathis went to work for The Associated Press as a Wirephoto operator. Three years later, he became a full-time AP photographer.