Pulitzer Prize-winning AP photographer Ron Edmonds dies. His images of Reagan shooting are indelible

WASHINGTON — Associated Press photographer Ron Edmonds, recently assigned to cover the Reagan White House, knew the most important part of his job was to keep an eye on the president “at all times.”

He did that for 28 years.

But there was never a day like March 30, 1981. That’s when Edmonds, who died Friday evening in Virginia at age 77, created a series of photos for the ages.

President Ronald Reagan had just spoken to members of the AFL-CIO at a Hilton hotel not far from the White House. When Reagan left the hotel, John Hinckley Jr. used a revolver to shoot the president, his aides, and his protective details.

Edmonds was on hand for an exclusive series of photos taken over the roof of Reagan’s limousine when Reagan was hit and then pushed into the vehicle. It rushed to the hospital where doctors saved the president’s life.

That reporting and those indelible images Edmonds won the Pulitzer for spot news photography.

“I wish it had been a photo without violence, without people getting hurt,” he said when the award was announced on April 12, 1982.

Edmonds was called to the Oval Office the next day for a meeting with the president. Reagan joked, Edmonds said, that photographers were always asking him for “just one more” photo. He could replay the shooting scene, the president said, but this time he would use a stuntman.

In a first-person retrospective, thirty years laterEdmonds said in an AP video that the fateful day took shape as one of thousands of events he covered during Reagan’s campaign: “Meet and greet, a little speech, shake a few hands.” I actually thought it was a rather boring event.”

Outside, however, the photographer heard what sounded like fireworks.

“Everything happened in such a quick, split second. If you looked to your right to see what the shot was, what the sound was, and looked back, the president was already gone. The president immediately, when the first bang went off “He kind of grimaced and then I pushed the shutter down,” Edmonds recalls.

Would it be blurry because Reagan was taken away so quickly? Edmonds had to wait for the film to be processed so he could see the negatives and know if he had anything.

“You’ve done the best you can with the abilities you have,” he said. He was sure of that: “I had the camera with me and I mean, I saw everything through the viewfinder.”

Honored in 2013 by the White House News Photographers Association with the Lifetime Achievement Award, Edmonds followed the arc of his career.

“I decided to take a photography course in 1968 and it literally changed my life,” Edmonds wrote. A newspaper photographer turned college professor encouraged Edmonds to photograph anti-war demonstrations in Sacramento, California.

Edmonds sold one of his images to United Press International for $25. “I saw it in the paper the next day and I knew what I wanted to do for a living.

He worked as a freelancer in California before working at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Five years later he was promoted to chief photographer.

Born June 6, 1946, in California, Edmonds met his wife Grace when she joined the newspaper in 1975 to cover courts. She survives him, as does their daughter Ashley.

Edmonds opted for a bigger pond and joined UPI in Sacramento in 1978 as a news imaging agency manager.

The AP came calling during Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign with a vacancy at the Washington bureau. “It was a dream come true to work in the White House with legends in the field,” Edmonds wrote.

The Pulitzer, he noted, was earned only on his second day as a White House photographer for the AP covering Reagan.

“The most important part of my job was to look at the President at all times, and I think I did everything I needed to do that day,” Edmonds wrote.

“Still, I was convinced I was in trouble with my bosses because I hadn’t been able to get a photo of John Hinckley Jr. to make. When I was told to call the president of the AP in New York, I assumed the worst. He said to me, ‘You did well, boy.’ I got a raise of $50 a week. My bureau chief, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Walter Mears, jokingly complained that he had only gotten a $25 a week raise for his Pulitzer.

Edmonds retired in 2009, when he was the senior White House photographer. He had covered presidents and the world, Super Bowls and the Olympics.