[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 21 (Wednesday, March 2, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 2, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                       A TRIBUTE TO GEORGE TAMES

  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, last week, on February 23, a man died, 
who was in many ways more of a significant historical figure in 
Washington than those of us who hold public office. I am speaking of my 
good friend, George Tames, who for many years was the chief 
photographer for The New York Times.
  George Tames was 75 when he died while undergoing heart surgery here 
in Washington. He was a close and dear friend. When my wife Marcelle 
and I were at his funeral on Saturday, I could not help but think back 
over the years that I had known him, both as a law student here in 
Washington and as a reader of the the New York Times. I had seen his 
photographs, many taken before I was born, and others taken when I was 
a child, of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman.
  During that funeral, my mind kept moving from past to present to the 
night before George died. He was at the hospital being prepared for 
open heart surgery the next day. It was surgery that he was concerned 
about, surgery that he feared. I knew that, and I had called to talk 
with him. We talked for quite a time. I remember saying two or three 
times--it was quite late at night--I said, ``George, do you not want to 
go to sleep and get some rest?'' He said, no, he just wanted to talk, 
because he worried about the next day. I said, ``You will be out of the 
hospital in a couple of weeks, and we will be having lunch in the 
Senators' dining room and, of course, you will not eat anything because 
all your friends will be coming over to shake your hand and talk with 
you.'' He said, ``That is OK, and I will still let you pay the bill.'' 
We joked back and forth.
  The next day I called the hospital several times during the surgery 
and all seemed to be going well. Then, we got the dreadful news that he 
did not make it. While we had talked the night before until it was time 
for him to go to sleep, in many ways I wished we had talked longer. As 
it always is with these things, something is always left unsaid. I 
thought about how proud all of us were of his accomplishments. But I 
felt the sadness that everybody at St. Sophia's was feeling on Saturday 
for his lovely wife Fran and his five children and five very lovely 
grandchildren.
  When I first came to the U.S. Senate, I remember the very first 
caucus I attended. It was held in what is now the Mike Mansfield room, 
S. 207. I was a 34-year-old kid, a little awed and wondering what I was 
doing in the U.S. Senate. A few days before, I had been a county 
prosecutor of one of Vermont's 14 counties. A few days later I walk 
into a caucus room and there are Scoop Jackson, Hubert Humphrey, John 
Stennis, Bob Byrd, Frank Church, Gaylord Nelson, Warren Magnuson, and 
Ted Kennedy. They were people I had just seen in the news but did not 
know. I retreated to an empty seat in the back of the room. I remember 
Senator Humphrey coming up to remark that I was learning fast. I said, 
``What do you mean?'' He said, ``When you sit in the back row, if it 
gets really boring, you can slip out quietly, and nobody will notice.''
  There was a debate going on as to whether or not there would be a 
committee to oversee the CIA--what later became the Church Committee. I 
remember that Senator Stennis, who was chairman of the Armed Services 
Committee, which did have oversight of the intelligence agencies, did 
not like the idea of a separate committee. Senator Frank Church was 
very much in favor of it. I remember these two courtly Senators having 
a polite, but very straightforward, debate. Senator Stennis' facial 
expressions reflected his great doubt about this idea, but Frank Church 
pursued his case strongly. It would take a half-hour to describe that 
scene, but George Tames walked into that room, took out his battered 
old Nikon, which looked as if it had doubled as a hammer at home, sized 
up the situation, took one shot, and left. This picture is indelibly in 
my mind--not so much the picture of my first caucus, but the picture 
that George Tames took. It turned out to be a prize-winning photograph 
on the front page of the New York Times the next day.
  George would walk into a room where dozens of photographers were 
taking hundreds of pictures. I swear the man not only did not use a 
light meter, I think he tested the wind for exposure. He would shoot 
two or three pictures, then stop to chat with everyone in the room 
before leaving. He knew everyone. And everyone knew George. No one was 
left guessing at what he had done, for the next day the photograph 
would be on the front page of the New York Times and it would be the 
best photograph of the event.
  Senator Humphrey was the first one to introduce me to George Tames. 
He said, ``I want you to know that had I become President of the United 
States, George Tames was going to be the White House photographer.''
  When he retired, just a short while ago, it seemed that everyone had 
a retirement party for George. After we get over a couple dozen 
retirement parties, you stop counting. But the one I remember was at 
the National Press Club, and Ken Burns and I were asked to speak about 
this wonderful man.
  I said that George was a man who had captured history better than 
most writers, because in the next century, and the century after, his 
photographs would give researchers and historians a real sense of what 
happened when President Roosevelt had lunch with Harry Truman to 
demonstrate to the American people he actually did talk with his Vice 
President, or when President Truman took his morning constitutional, or 
when Dwight Eisenhower pondered questions, or Richard Nixon decided to 
play golf, or when John Kennedy, bearing the awesome burdens of the 
Presidency, leaned over a table in silhouette in the Oval Office, and 
on and on.
  These were photographs taken by George Tames, and they are what 
people remember. They will fill in the living part of history, not just 
for our generation but for generations to come.
  George wrote a wonderful book with his photographs called ``Eye on 
Washington: Presidents Who Have Known Me,'' a very typical comment.
  I think one of the things that I was most proud of is he asked me to 
write a jacket blurb for him on that book.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that what I wrote be printed 
in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       Historians, including my friend George Tames, will write 
     the history of the past fifty years. George Tames's 
     brilliance as a photographer will make that history live 
     forever, His images are a national treasure.--Senator Patrick 
     J. Leahy.

  Mr. LEAHY. So, Madam President, all of us in church on Saturday 
shared an enormous sense of sadness and loss. But as I looked around 
and saw progenies of his, people who came along and learned from him, 
Paul Hosefros, Jose Lopez, and others from the Times, and realized the 
legacy would go on, I also could not help but think that we, in effect, 
celebrated a life of a man who had done more to show the history of 
this Nation then most people would in a lifetime or one who could bring 
about memories for those of us who shared part of these lives better 
than anyone else.
  I ask unanimous consent that the obituary from the New York Times by 
David Binder and the obituary from the Washington Post, which is the 
Associated Press, be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the obituaries were ordered to be printed 
in the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Feb. 24, 1994]

                 George Tames, Photographer, Dies at 75

                           (By David Binder)

       Washington, February 23--George Tames, a news photographer 
     for more than half a century whose work changed the way 
     Americans look at Presidents and political power, died here 
     today while undergoing heart surgery. He was 75.
       His photographs chronicled 10 Presidents from Franklin D. 
     Roosevelt to George Bush, countless members of Congress and 
     visiting statesman from Churchill to Khrushchev. President 
     Eisenhower chose two Tames photographs for official 
     portraits, and a third became a 6-cent Eisenhower stamp.
       The photo for the stamp was a characteristic Tames shot, 
     taken of Eisenhower in 1953 in an unguarded moment as the 
     president was delivering a radio-television address 
     announcing that a truce had been agreed to ending the Korean 
     War.
       Over the years Mr. Tames also won awards and citations for 
     dramatic action shots of a farmers' protest, a civil rights 
     march and a still life of the Lincoln Memorial. The bulk of 
     his work was for The New York Times, which he joined in 1945, 
     after six years with Times magazine. That was the era of the 
     large Speed Graphic camera, which shot only one frame at a 
     time. He retired from The Times 40 years later in the era of 
     the .35 millimeter camera with high-speed shutters and large, 
     fast lenses.


                          kennedy at his desk

       Mr. Tames was a keen student of Washington's changing 
     political culture; early on, he developed an instinct for 
     capturing dramatic moments on film.
       One of his most widely known photographs showed a 
     silhouette of President Kennedy from the back, leaning on his 
     desk in the Oval Office and visibly burdened by the weight of 
     his job. It was the kind of picture that Mr. Tames could find 
     and shoot because of his ability to develop easy and informal 
     access to the powerful.
       ``Mine was an unofficial role in his political kingdom,'' 
     Mr. Tames recalled in his memoir, ``Eye on Washington,'' 
     published in 1990, ``That of jokester and bringer of news, 
     rumors and spicy Capitol Hill gossip.''
       Knowing that Kennedy often worked standing up because of an 
     injured back and that his door was often open, Mr. Tames saw 
     the President bent over, reading something in a newspaper. 
     ``I deliberately underexposed,'' he said later. ``I wanted 
     the blackness, the mood that I saw with my eye.''


                            posterity's spy

       In a tribute two years ago on the occasion of the National 
     Press Club's Fourth Estate award to the photographer, Ken 
     Burns, the documentary film maker, spoke of Mr. Tames' work 
     as ``pictures that last, that speak eloquently, that have and 
     will endure, that clearly are the DNA of our political story 
     in the last 50 years.''
       Mr. Burns said Mr. Tames was ``posterity's spy--a mole--
     penetrating farther and much deeper into our political 
     landscape and psyche than any reporter who hangs on words 
     has.''
       George Tames was born in Jan. 21, 1919, a few blocks from 
     the Capitol. He was the son of Greek-Albanian immigrants; his 
     father was a pushcart peddler. In the Depression, when the 
     large Tames family depended heavily on relief, President 
     Roosevelt was venerated in their back-alley home, his 
     photograph placed alongside those of St. George and the 
     Virgin Mother next to candles on an icon stand.
       George was introduced to the Capitol early in his life. He 
     had to work after completing the 10th grade and he began as 
     an office courier for Time-Life, which took him back to 
     Capitol Hill.
       The work of news photographers attracted him, although at 
     the time cameramen were not allowed to roam the Congressional 
     corridors. But he was soon permitted to make photographs of 
     individual members of Congress, and by the end of World War 
     II he was among a small number of photographers permitted to 
     take pictures of Roosevelt.
       Although Mr. Tames had a deep affection for President 
     Kennedy, President Truman was undoubtedly his favorite, not 
     the least because he was the first to treat photographers 
     with respect.
       Mr. Tames relished the recollection of the day Truman 
     ``made White House photographers first-class citizens'' by 
     freeing them from the confines of a tiny West Wing chamber 
     they called the Doghouse, and giving them entree to the press 
     room.
       Mr. Tames recalled Truman telling a foreign dignitary: ``I 
     am President of the most powerful nation in the world. I take 
     orders from nobody, except photographers.''
       Mr. Tames had a wiry build and always seeming to be on the 
     move around a city he loved. He was a tireless raconteur, 
     telling anecdotes he had shared with the high and mighty, 
     capped with a raucous laugh. This was a part of the persona 
     he cultivated that made him popular not only with the 
     politicians he covered, but also with his colleagues.
       They celebrated him at 14 retirement parties, starting in 
     1986, after which everyone lost count. But Mr. Tames did not 
     really retire. he went on shooting pictures as a freelance, 
     mainly for the Times, and when a colleague or a colleague's 
     child got married he happily volunteered to make the wedding 
     pictures, asking only for the cost of the film and permission 
     to dance with the bride.
       He was usually the life of any party he attended, ``He's 
     the champion,'' Cornell Capa, a former Life photographer, 
     said a decade ago. ``He beats everybody.''
       In a tribute to Mr. Tames, Wally Bennett, a longtime 
     Washington photographer for Time, said today: ``He knew all 
     the players in the political game. He did his background 
     work. He had a marvelous eye. He used his knowledge to make 
     marvelous photographs that will be in the history books.''
       Mr. Tames is survived by his wife, the former Frances Fay 
     Owens; two sons, Chris, of Nags Head, N.C., and Michael G., 
     of Manteo, N.C.; three daughters, Pamale Tames Goodman of 
     Wilson, N.C., Kathryn Tames Walton of Springfield, Va., and 
     Stephanie Tames Nelson of Statesboro, Ga.

               [From the Washington Post, Feb. 24, 1994]

                     Photographer George Tames Dies

       George Tames, who photographed 11 presidents during nearly 
     a half-century as a Washington-based photographer for the New 
     York Times, died Feb. 23 while undergoing heart surgery. He 
     was 75.
       Mr. Tames, who died at Washington Hospital Center, used wit 
     and charm to gain unique access to presidents from Franklin 
     D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, said colleagues at the Times, 
     which he joined in 1945.
       ``He photographed Roosevelt and Truman * * * sitting on the 
     White House lawn having breakfast, and he was still at it 50 
     years later. That's an unparalleled run,'' said R.W. Apple 
     Jr., chief of the Times' Washington bureau. ``He had a 
     wonderful eye.''
       President Eisenhower chose photos by Mr. Tames for his 
     official portraits, and a postage stamp honoring Eisenhower 
     was based on a picture by him.
       Along the way, Mr. Tames won numerous awards from the White 
     House Press Photographers Association and other groups and 
     received the National Press Club's Fourth Estate Award for 
     lifetime achievement.
       One of his best-known photographs was of a backlit John F. 
     Kennedy leaning over an Oval Office table reading a document.
       On his last assignment, he photographed Secretary of State 
     Warren Christopher on Sunday.
       Mr. Tames, known as a consummate storyteller, chronicled 
     his career in a 1990 book, ``Eye on Washington: Presidents 
     Who Have Known Me.''
       Mr. Tames, a native of Washington, began his news career in 
     1939 as an office boy at Times magazine and learned 
     photography on the job.
       He is survived by his wife, Frances; five children; and 
     five grandchildren.

  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I see other Senators have come to the 
floor, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.

                          ____________________