NEW YORK, NY (July 6, 2009) – Norman Welton, who worked for the Associated Press for 44 years including 31 years as a photography editor covering New York City, died July 1 at a Port Jervis hospital after battling colon cancer, AP reports.
Welton retired in 1992 after a career with AP that started after he finished high school in Chicago, a vocation that was interrupted only by two years of Army service during the Korean War in 1952 when he worked at the Pentagon's communications center.
New York area photographers remember him for being a mentor and for working generously with newcomers. "He was the last of his breed when he worked in New York," Newscast US president Jim Sulley remembers. "He was a real photographer's photo editor."
During his career Welton covered the Olympic Games in Montreal in 1976, Moscow in 1980, Los Angeles in 1984, and the winter games in Lake Placid, NY, in 1984. In 1961 he was named as a senior photography editor for AP in their Manhattan headquarters, and he was also active in the Wire Service Guild and served as a Guild administrator in the 1970s.
AP says Welton had retired to Hawley, PA, where he and his wife were active in their community in the Pocono Mountains and participated in bridge tournaments across the country. Florence Welton, his wife of three decades, died in 1998, AP says, and Welton is survived by a son from a previous marriage. A family member told AP that Welton had been hospitalized after a fall in his Pennsylvania home.
