Tuesday, September 04, 2012

Godspeed, Nick Longworth

scaffold-crash-600x411

We received word this evening that former Indianapolis News photographer Nick Longworth died yesterday.

Nick was a great newspaper photographer who helped illustrate several of my stories when I was a young reporter at The News. He left The News to work for the Republican Party and moved to Washington, D.C. In recent years, he moved back to Indiana and lived in Carmel.

Nick narrowly escaped serious injury or death on Memorial Day, 1960, when race fans aboard a 30-foot scaffold jumped to their feet for the Parade Lap of the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race, throwing the structure out of balance and causing it to crash to the ground. Two men were killed and about 80 people were injured in the accident which signaled the end of scaffolds at the 500 Mile Race.

That’s Nick, circled in red.

copydeskA huge blowup of this photo hung on the wall of The Indianapolis News city room in the first few years of my career there.

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