BLEECKER, NY (December 26, 2008) – NPPA Life Member William J. "Sandy" Colton, a writer and photographer and historian who was the former photography editor of the Washington Star during the years of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and later an editor for the Associated Press, who was a correspondent for Stars & Stripes during the Korean War, died Christmas Day at his dream home in upstate New York, a log cabin he built with his wife and friends.
Colton, 83, had fought a long battle with cancer, family members said.
Despite being an accomplished photographer, author, and historian, Colton was known to claim that his greatest achievement was being known to young professional photographers today as "the father of Jay and Jimmy Colton." Jay Colton is the retired associate picture editor of Time magazine, and Jimmy Colton is picture editor of Sports Illustrated magazine.
While an enlisted man in the Air Force in Korea, he wrote the initial history of what was later to become the Air Force Research and Development Command, for which he was later offered but he declined a commission as an Air Force historian. At the time Colton was a feature writer for the military newspaper Stars & Stripes. He became their chief photographer, traveling the Pacific, Asia, and the Middle East for them before returning to the States in 1961. Colton then worked for the now-defunt Washington Star newspaper in Washington, DC before joining the Associated Press in New York, where he was the photography editor for several books published by AP and where he helped the wire service make the transition to color and adopt new technology. In 1984 he retired from being AP's photography director and a columnist for AP Newsfeatures.
After retirement, Colton was an active member of the Eddie Adams' Barnstorm Workshops, and he was the inaugural winner of the Eddie Adams Award, named in honor of the late Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Eddie Adams. A longtime friends of Adams, Colton was involved in the upstate New York annual workshop from the time Adams founded it in 1988.
Colton received NPPA's J. Winton Lemon Award for "outstanding technical achievements and years of service to the profession," and in addition to NPPA he was a member of the White House News Photographers Association, the Society of Motion PIcture and Television Engineers, an honorary member of the University of Missouri's Kappa Alpha Mu photojournalism fraternity, and the Order of Kentucky Colonels.
In addition to Jay and Jim Colton, he is survived by his wife Irene, of Bleecker, NY; a sister, Patricia Knight of Mira Loma, CA; and numerous nieces and nephews.
There will be a visitation from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. EST on January 2, 2009, at Barter & Donnan Funeral Home in Johnstown, NY, and a funeral mass at 11 a.m. on January 3, 2009, at St. Anthony's Roman Catholic Church in Johnstown, NY, where Colton served as an altar boy in his youth.
The family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Eddie Adams Workshop or to the Stars & Stripes Museum in Bloomfield, MO.
