By Jay Mather
Chuck Freestone died April 22, 2022, one day after turning 90. When I think about his last days, I’m grateful for the “firsts.”
He was my first photo boss, a mentor and collegial friend. Chuck hired me in 1972 to work at the Sentinel Newspapers, a chain of 13 suburban weeklies, in Denver. Our separate journeys to Denver were vastly different, yet serendipitous.
Born Charles R. Freestone in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, Chuck enlisted in the Air Force toward the end of World War II. As part of the 496th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron in Landstuhl, Germany, he was able to use his love of photography as photo editor of the European Air Force Magazine. After the military, he attended Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California, and the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee.
Chuck’s photojournalism career began with Tilton Publications in Rochelle, Illinois, where he won state and national awards and was involved in Sigma Delta Chi, the Society of Professional Journalists and the Illinois Press Photographers Association. A lifetime member of the NPPA since 1958, the organization recognized Chuck numerous times for his dedication to the profession. He had a résumé!
I took two J-school photography courses at the University of Colorado in Boulder and began making photographs during my Peace Corps tour in Malaysia in 1969. Returning to Denver in 1971, I had a few good pictures that barely made a minimal portfolio.
Here comes the serendipity. Two veteran journalists in Denver, Steve Larson, director of photography at The Denver Post, and Dick Hilker, the executive editor for the Sentinel Newspapers, unknowingly made our connection possible.
Larson advised Chuck and me that working for the Post would be difficult. Night shifts would be permanent until a current staff member left the paper. He thought the Sentinels offered more opportunity.
After an interview in late 1971, Hilker said he’d keep me in mind for the next opportunity. Hilker met Chuck in 1972 and hired him to redesign the 13 editions’ visual content. In passing, Hilker gave Chuck my name.
Whatever Chuck saw in my sparse portfolio changed the course of my life. Our friendship began in September 1972 and was always more than a work relationship.
Chuck’s talent extended beyond photography. He knew how to operate effectively in an organization. He was a mentor who promoted collegiality. Within a year, he hired Tom Strongman from Colorado Springs, and over the next five years, Chuck supported us, often behind the scenes negotiating with Hilker, copy editors and the managing editors of the various papers. He negotiated everything from page space to company cars.
We covered stories as we saw them, edited the images and often produced our own photo layouts.
Tom recalls, “In many ways, our days at the Sentinel were most improbable. The three of us — Jay, Chuck and myself — covered events for more than a dozen suburban weekly newspapers. With company cars, we covered the suburbs of Denver, sometimes driving more than 100 miles a day covering four or five assignments. Chuck was instrumental in getting space for photo stories and layouts, often fighting battles for us without our knowledge. Our mission was to create picture stories and layouts that told stories of everyday life in the suburbs. As the song lyric by JJ Heller goes, there is ‘magic in the mundane, a big picture in a small frame.’ ”
Eric Bakke, whom Chuck hired in 1977, remembers that Chuck “embraced collaborative thinking. Teamwork was encouraged but not really coaxed. I believe his enthusiasm for photojournalism and the powerful statement photo essays provided became a significant element of his leadership. In part, I think that is Chuck’s legacy. Always positive, upbeat and driven to find a positive outlook no matter the circumstances. He was never mean-spirited, and when he was happy or excited, the man had one of the greatest laughs of all time.”
Benjamin Benschneider, another 1977 hire, knew Chuck this way: “Chuck’s influence is etched in my brain as he hand-wrote each of the many assignments we photographers tackled. I remember on the days scheduled to shoot doing about seven, 12 per day? I would map out my route the night before and called the subjects.
“One day while out shooting, I had an assignment at a mall. After I finished, there was Chuck with a big smile. He said he had been following me throughout my day without me knowing. He said he wanted to see how I worked and interacted with subjects. I’m glad I wasn’t goofing off; however, there was never any time for that, and all I really wanted to do was make pictures anyway. He treated me to lunch at the mall.”
Chuck realized the magic of Denver wouldn’t last, and once again his support helped us all move on to new opportunities. Coincidentally, during the NPPA national convention in Vail, Colorado, that Chuck facilitated, he and Rich Clarkson agreed to a unique, three-week “job switch” between the Sentinel photographers and three photographers from The Topeka Capital-Journal in Kansas: Jim Richardson, Carl Davaz and Jeff Jacobsen. That provided a catalyst for several job changes. Tom moved to The Kansas City Star, Eric to Topeka, then back to The Denver Post. Jim would eventually go to the Denver Post as well.
Chuck moved to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, bringing Ben with him. Chuck was hired as the assistant managing editor with the mandate to redesign the newspaper. When the winds of change blew again, he moved to the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson in an AME role to improve its visual appearance.
Chuck’s ongoing involvement in the NPPA and the NPPA Foundation was another testament to his support for all the photographers he nurtured.
Chuck and Sharon Freestone on their wedding day June 20, 1959. They would be married for fifty eight years. Photo provided by Chuck Freestone
Chuck retired in 1991. I kept in touch with him throughout the decades: holiday cards and phone calls. This quiet, humble and private person began sharing some of the difficult days in his family life. This was more personal than we’d ever been as working friends. It was about trust.
I knew Chuck longer and closer than I knew my own father. Yet there was more. His 2016 holiday card contained the short, poignant message: “It’s been a hard year. Sherie (his wife) died in July of cancer. Fifty-eight years was not long enough.”
His four best friends — Tom, Eric, Ben and I — planned a reunion with him in April 2017. We spent a long weekend in Tucson reminiscing about all the years we’d known one another and what it meant to us. His spirits were rejuvenated; ours as well.
None of us ever left photography. Tom’s passion is the automotive world, Eric continues to work as a contract sports photographer, Ben is one of the finest architectural photographers in the world, and I embraced landscape photography in central Oregon. We owe our shared inspiration to Chuck.
He continued to live in his home, maintaining it as best he could. Time, however, was not on his side. Last August, he fell in the shower and broke a hip, and moved to a care center for therapy. He never returned home. His son, Scott, arranged for the house and its contents to be sold. Chuck kept his favorite pictures of Sherie and famous jazz musicians he photographed in Chicago nightclubs, his trumpet and a Linhof 4x5 camera kit.
The four of us wanted to get to Tucson this spring to see Chuck again. Schedules and medical conditions kept all but me from going.
Lyn Alweis, a former Denver Post photographer of 32 years who lives in Tucson, visited Chuck with me for an entire day, again reminiscing about our lives. He was still lively, humorous and congenial. It was also one of his last lucid days.
I called him on his birthday not knowing if he’d be able to talk. The care-center attendant held the phone for him. I said again how much his friends loved and respected him. He was able to say, “Thanks for everything,” his last words to me.
His son called the next morning, my birthday, as I walked on a beach in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. It was the call I knew was coming. He said his dad had passed a few minutes earlier, and he thanked all of us for emotionally supporting Chuck in recent years.
Chuck was a treasure to all who knew him. Though his obituary in the Arizona Daily Star dutifully recounts the events in his life, there is so much more that needs to be known. I’ve tried to tell it. Of course, he would have laughed it all off with a smile.
Oh — he really hated the nickname “Peaches.’’
Jay Mather retired from The Sacramento Bee in 2007. His newspaper career spanned 35 years, beginning in Denver with Chuck Freestone. He worked in Kentucky at the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times for 10 years and shared the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting with Joel Brinkley. Jay's work in Yosemite National Park and the Sacramento Ballet while working for The Sacramento Bee was significant in its breadth, style and historic importance. He resides in Mechanicsville, Virginia, and can be contacted at [email protected].
