And now the rest of the story behind this amazing picture.... Rocco Morabito (November 2, 1920 – April 5, 2009)[1] was an American photographer who spent the majority of his career at the Jacksonville Journal. His 1967 award-winning photo entitled "Kiss of Life" showed a utility worker, J.D. Thompson, suspended on a utility pole and giving mouth to mouth resuscitation to a fellow lineman, Randall G. Champion, who was unconscious and hanging upside down after contacting a high voltage line. Champion survived and lived until 2002, when he died of heart failure at the age of 64. Thompson is still living. The photograph was published in newspapers around the world. Morabito, born in Port Chester, New York, moved to Florida when he was 5, and by age 10 was working as a newsboy, selling papers for the Jacksonville Journal. He served in World War II in the Army Air Forces as a ball-turret gunner on a B-17. After the war, he returned to the Jacksonville Journal and started his photography career shooting sporting events for the paper. He worked for the Journal for 42 years, 33 of them as a photographer, until retiring in 1982. He died on April 5, 2009 while in Hospice care.[2]
Posted on: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 02:11:47 +0000
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