Positivity: Photographer of Shriners’ Signature Photo Honored
It’s amazing how one photo has meant so much:
Former Post graphics editor to be honored by Shriners
Post staff report
May 5, 2006A photograph snapped in 1/1000th of a second on a routine news assignment 36 years ago has become an icon for Shriners hospitals.
The photo of a Shriner carrying a crippled girl in one arm and her crutches in his other has inspired statues, stained glass windows, mosaics, shoulder patches, pins, tie tacs, key chains and numerous other replicas.
The photograph so vividly illustrates Shriners helping children that it needs no caption. Shriners simply call it the “Editorial Without Words.”
The photographer who took the picture, Randy Dieter, 62, of Westwood, said it’s “great that I did something that will live beyond me.”
Statues based on Dieter’s photo have been erected at Shriners hospitals across the country, including the one for burn victims in Cincinnati.
Dieter, former graphics editor of The Kentucky Post, is being honored this weekend by Shriners in Colorado Springs, Colo., where a statue outside a Shriners Hospital based on his photo is being re-dedicated.
Shriners also have invited Dieter to a parade in Canyon City, Colo., and to Pueblo, Colo., where a new statue that replicates his photo will be dedicated at a Shriners hospital.
Joining Dieter will be the people in the photo - Shriner Al Hortman, now in his 70s, of Macon, Ga., and Bobbi Jo Wright, who was 5 in the photo and is now 41, of Evansville, Ind.
“It’s been about five years since I’ve seen them,” said Dieter, who over the years has occasionally been reunited with the duo at Shriners events.
“Bobbi Jo still has some problems walking, but if it wasn’t for the Shriners, she would be in a wheelchair. I say, ‘God bless the Shriners and what they do.’”
Dieter was a newspaper photographer in Evansville when he was assigned to take photographs of a Shriners outing for crippled children at an Evansville amusement park in June 1970.
He had taken four rolls of film and was just about to leave when he noticed a Shriner carrying a girl and her crutches.
“I was just looking for a good picture and that seemed to fill the bill,” said Dieter.
Mechanical problems nearly scuttled the photo.
“I had a motor drive on the camera, and it wasn’t firing,” Dieter said.
The Shriner and girl passed him by as he struggled with the camera.
Dieter ran to catch up, pounding on batteries to try to get them back into alignment to power the camera.
Hortman told Dieter at a reunion a few years ago, “I saw this guy hitting a camera with his hand, and I thought you were nuts.”
Dieter finally got the camera to operate and snapped the last shot on the roll of film with a telephoto lens as the pair moved away from him.
“It took 1/1000th of a second,” he said, to create an enduring image.
The photo ran the next day on the front page of the Evansville Sunday Courier & Press.
A salesman at the newspaper was a Shriner and asked Dieter if the Shriners could use it in their newsletter.
“From there, it just kind of spread and went national,” said Dieter. “It’s been endorsed as the icon or logo of the Shriners.”
As for the resulting fame, Dieter said, “It’s been most embarrassing.”
….. “Every Shriner organization sent me a letter of thanks. That in itself was more than enough thanks for me.”
