SAN ANTONIO, Texas (AP) — Patrick Hamilton, a fight veteran of the Vietnam Warfare who coated civil wars in Central America as a photojournalist for The Related Press and later labored at Reuters masking the primary Gulf Warfare in Iraq, has died after an extended wrestle with most cancers.
He died at age 74 Sunday at dwelling in San Antonio.
Hamilton’s expertise in Vietnam served him properly in Central America throughout the Eighties after which with Reuters, for which he coated Operation Desert Storm in 1990.
Colleagues remembered him as a mild skilled who was cool beneath strain and as somebody they needed at their aspect in battle zones like El Salvador and Nicaragua.
“After I drove round in a struggle zone in northern Nicaragua with a man like Hamilton sitting shotgun, I had a way of safety that I didn’t get pleasure from if driving round with some on a regular basis John Doe,” photojournalist and creator Invoice Gentile wrote in his memoir, “Await Me.”
“Pat had seen struggle as a Marine combatant in Vietnam and people experiences in some methods ready him to return to struggle; however this time with a special weapon, a digicam, and a special mission — to indicate the world each the horrors of struggle itself and the quiet dignity of so many whose lives have been upended or ruined,” stated Santiago Lyon, former AP vice chairman and director of images.
Earlier than becoming a member of AP in Mexico Metropolis in 1979, Hamilton was a photographer on the San Antonio Specific-Information. Certainly one of his most well-known images was of President Gerald Ford in entrance of the Alamo biting right into a tamale with the shuck nonetheless on. Analysts stated the blunder prompted Ford to lose Texas — and probably the presidency, with the state’s electoral votes going to Jimmy Carter.
Hamilton was with AP till 1985 and joined Reuters later that yr. He left Reuters in 1991 and was employed as picture editor at a Texas newspaper, the McAllen Monitor, the place he mentored youthful photographers.
“I discovered a lot from Patrick. As a younger photojournalist I used to be intrigued by his stint with the AP Mexico Metropolis and his protection of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua and the opposite tumult in Central America,” McAllen Monitor photographer Delcia Lopez stated in a Fb submit. “I keep in mind Patrick exhibiting me a set of his superb black and white images. There was one picture that caught with me, the picture of Cuban president Fidel Castro having a drink with creator Ernest Hemingway.”
An avid reader, in later years Hamilton taught English literature on the College of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, the place he completed his bachelor’s diploma and obtained a grasp’s diploma in English.
He’s survived by his spouse of 44 years, the previous Sylvia Browne, whom he met in Managua, Nicaragua, whereas she was standing in line on the U.S. Embassy to assist a buddy get a visa.
“There was an extended line for visas and all of the photographers and reporters got here. I noticed one thing I appreciated and smiled, and he approached me,” she recounted.
He’s additionally survived by the couple’s three kids, Patrick R. Hamilton, Michael M. Hamilton and Alina M. Hamilton, and three granddaughters.