The Kiss of Life, 40 years later
It was a fraction of a second in Jacksonville history.
The cliche would be to say that moment, the split second captured on one frame of black-and-white film inside Rocco Morabito's Rolleiflex on a morning in 1967, was forever frozen in time. To a degree, that's true. But decades later that exact moment - Randall Champion dangling upside down from a utility pole, J.D. Thompson cradling his head and blowing air into his lungs - isn't just preserved.
It is growing.
It is being dissected, discussed, enlarged, reprinted, even sculpted.
It is the subject of a film that the Jacksonville Historical Society will premier Thursday - two weeks before the 40th anniversary of the day the Jacksonville Journal photographer officially received the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography.
It also is part of a new, high-tech interactive exhibit in a Washington museum.
At the Newseum, an image that is very 20th century - shot on 120mm film, hurriedly processed in chemicals to make a print as presses were held for an afternoon paper - now can be viewed in a 21st century format. At a kiosk, guests can access an electronic database with Pulitzer Prize-winning photos, touch the screen and enlarge The Kiss of Life to the point where you can see the linemen's cheeks, puffed full of air.
Or they can watch an interview with Morabito telling the story behind the photo.
Ken Crawford, producer in the broadcasting department of the Newseum, said he considers it "the ultimate spot news photograph." He remembers coming to Jacksonville in 2005 to interview Morabito about it.
"He's so old school," Crawford said. "He doesn't wear the Pulitzer on his sleeve. He was kind of confused why we would want to talk to him. He said he was just doing his job."
Morabito, now 87, repeated that last week when talking about the film premier. When told that Thompson also would be there for a reception before the film, Morabito said, "Good, good, good. ... He's the one who deserves all this hullabaloo. Yes, sir. He's the one who did it."
The apprentice lineman saved a life. Champion lived another 35 years, surviving another electrical shock along the way, before dying of heart failure in 2002. Yet when you ask Thompson, now 67, about the split second captured on Morabito's film, he echoes what the photographer has said. He was just doing his job, following his training. No big deal.
Forty years later, plenty of others disagree.
The photo, of course, represents a proud moment in the Times-Union's history. In one corner of the newsroom, there is a framed copy of the photo and a certificate from Columbia University dated May 6, 1968. On anniversaries of the Pulitzer, we often re-tell that story. How Dick Bussard was the city editor who made the call to push back the deadline and redo the front page. How Bob Pate was the copy editor who gave it the slug that stuck, The Kiss of Life.
But pride in the photo goes well beyond our newsroom. For Emily Lisska, executive director of the Jacksonville Historical Society, working on the film took her back to the late 1960s in Jacksonville. She talks about how that was a tumultuous time not only in Jacksonville but in America. And here was this photo that captured this dramatic moment - with a happy ending.
"Rocco's photo sort of breathed life into our city itself," she said.
Perhaps nowhere do they cherish the photo more than at the company now known as JEA.
No big deal?
Jo Ann Ebanks, a customer care consultant at JEA, starts talking about the photo, about what it means to her personally - Thompson became her brother-in-law - and to her co-workers. She mentions the title and pauses.
"It gives me chill bumps," she says.
Chris Richardson knows the feeling. His father was the crew foreman at the time of the accident. Had only been in the job for two weeks. Through the years his dad didn't talk much about it. But Richardson, now a foreman, knows the photo meant something to his dad. He recalls that his dad kept a copy of it in his desk. And one Christmas, Richardson talked to Morabito and got permission to make a copy of the photo.
So when he's asked what the photo means to him, he says: "To be honest with you, I'm about in tears talking about it. ... It's one of those things that brings me back to being a kid."
And when he was a kid, he was friends with Thompson's daughter. He remembers going over to their house and finding out that the lineman had an award for his role. It was tucked away in the closet. No big deal, right? He was just doing his job.
Talk to Karen Perkins, JEA employee advocate. She has been with the company for 28 years. In the late '80s, she worked at a facility with the two linemen. Until someone else told her, she had no idea they were the ones in the photo.
Now she makes sure new linemen know the story of the photo. She uses it in employee orientation. It's one thing to cite statistics when trying to emphasize the importance of safety and the history of the company. It's another to put that picture up on a screen.
"Linemen all over the world love that photo," she said.
For the 40th anniversary, she has been working on her own personal tribute: a clay sculpture. It has forced her to think about the photo in three-dimensional terms. Not just the bends in arms and puffs in cheeks, but also things that you can't see in the photo.
She started by sculpting Morabito on the ground, holding his camera.
When asked about this, he chuckles and says, "Isn't that something?"
Yes, it is.
Even if the retired photographer and the lineman don't think so, it is something. It's a piece of history. A piece that, 40 years later, keeps growing.
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