[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.
____________________