Ike Altgens was a photojournalist, photo editor, and field reporter for the Associated Press based in Dallas, Texas. He became known for his photographic work during the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. He appeared briefly as a film actor and model during his 40-year career with the AP.
About Ike Altgens in brief
Ike Altgens was a photojournalist, photo editor, and field reporter for the Associated Press based in Dallas, Texas. He became known for his photographic work during the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. He appeared briefly as a film actor and model during his 40-year career with the AP, which ended in 1979. He and his wife Clara died in 1995 at about the same time in their Dallas home. Both had suffered from long illnesses, and police said poisoning by a malfunctioning furnace also may have contributed to their deaths. He was orphaned as a child and raised by a widowed aunt; he was hired by the AP in 1938 when he was 19, shortly after his graduation from North Dallas High School. He also attended night classes at Southern Methodist University, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in speech with a minor in journalism. In 1959, he played Secretary Lloyd Patterson in the low-budget science fiction thriller Beyond the Time Barrier ; his role included the film’s final line of dialogue. He had a role as a witness in Free, White and 21, and was a witness in The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald. AltgENS photographed President Kennedy for the AP at Perrin Air Force Base in 1961. He died in Dallas on December 12, 1995, at the age of 89. He is buried in Dallas. He has a daughter, Mary, and a son, James, who both served in the United States Coast Guard during World War II; he moonlighted as an radio broadcaster during this time. He married Clara Halliburton in July 1944 and was assigned to its news bureau.
In 1945, he went back to work for the local AP bureau and eventually earned a position as a senior editor. On November 22, 1963, he photographed the motorcade that was to take President Kennedy from Love Field to his scheduled appearance at the Dallas Trade Mart. He asked instead to go to the AP offices in Dallas as the wirephoto editor. The second, showing First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy toward the rear of the presidential limousine and Secret Service agent Clint Hill on its bumper, was reproduced on the front pages of newspapers around the world. Within days, his preceding photograph became controversial after people began to question whether accused assassin LeeHarvey Oswald was visible in the main doorway of the Texas School Book Depository as the gunshots were fired at JFK. He set up a second photograph for a second time, but he did not recall having any reaction since he thought the noise came from a firecracker along Main Street. On the day of the shooting, he was the only photojournalists to climb to the 29th floor of the Mercantile National Bank Building in Dallas to cover the rescue of a young girl from an elevator fire. He said it was a mistake to put his camera on the bridge, rather than a location within a private property. He tried to find a good angle but uniformed police said he was on private property and turned, and he moved to a location in the plaza.
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This page is based on the article Ike Altgens published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 05, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
