Departures of note

William M. Gallagher won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Photography for a picture he took almost on a whim: a shot of Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson sitting on a platform at a Labor Day rally in Flint Park, his legs crossed to reveal a hole in the sole of his right shoe. Gallagher, kneeling at the base of the platform, snapped the photo without looking through the viewfinder. He did not expect the Flint Journal to publish it, since the paper endorsed Stevenson's Republican opponent, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and he handed it to his editor with the remark, 'I just finished this for the hell of it. I don't suppose a Republican paper would want to use it.' The Journal ran it on the front page anyway, and the image became one of the campaign's most memorable, contrasting with Stevenson's serious, patrician image. Stevenson later sent Gallagher a telegram: 'Glad to hear you won with a hole in one.'

Gallagher was born in Hiawatha, Kansas, in 1923 and moved to Flint, Michigan, in 1936. He earned his first camera in high school by selling magazines and graduated from St. Matthew's High School in 1943. During World War II he served in the U.S. Army in the signal corps, medical corps, and air corps. He began his professional photography career with the Sporting Digest in Flint in 1946, and the next year joined the Flint Journal, where he became a staff photographer within months and remained until his death in 1975.

Colleagues described Gallagher as 'a boisterous, flamboyant character' who maintained good relationships with local police and government officials. He was known for pranks, once setting off a cherry bomb inside the police department and watching officers scramble, and another time commandeering a police helicopter while covering a story. He died of meningitis at age 52, after 27 years with the Flint Journal.