Photographer who captured Reagan campaign dies at 83
BY Wire reports
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
11/14/12 at 2:53 AM
Walt Zeboski, who chronicled Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign and a succession of California governors as a photographer for The Associated Press, died Monday in Sacramento. He was 83.
Company records show that Zeboski was hired as a permanent AP employee in 1966 and that his photography career spanned more than three decades, mainly in Sacramento. He covered four California governors, including Pat Brown, Ronald Reagan, Jerry Brown and George Deukmejian, as well as countless political power players in the state Legislature.
In 1980, he covered all aspects of Reagan's life on the presidential campaign trail. Zeboski also captured quiet moments of Reagan and his wife, Nancy Reagan, on horseback at their ranch north of Santa Barbara and aboard a campaign plane.
The photographer also snapped iconic images of the era, including labor leader Cesar Chavez, armed members of the Black Panther Party, U.S. Sen. George McGovern, who lost to President Richard Nixon in 1972 in a historic electoral landslide, and Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, the infamous Charles Manson disciple who tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford during a stop in Sacramento.
Zeboski captured Fromme sitting in a U.S. Marshals Service vehicle as she returned to jail in 1975, an image that continues to get frequent use.
He also captured Queen Elizabeth II's 1983 visit to Yosemite National Park and the first disabled climber to scale El Capitan.
