Ray Matjasic led Plain Dealer photographers and won national awards
Published: Thursday, November 18, 2010, 3:20 PM Updated: Thursday, November 18, 2010, 3:26 PM
Grant Segall
Whether shooting photos for the Marines or The Plain Dealer, Ray Matjasic never hesitated to charge into danger.
"Ray was the best street photographer I ever knew," retired PD Picture Editor Bob Dorksen said Thursday. "He was aggressive. He knew the cops. He could get into places others couldn't."
Matjasic died Tuesday, Nov. 16, one day after turning 90, at the Slovenian Home for the Aged.
The nationally honored Matjasic started delivering Plain Dealers at age 9, rising at 3:30 a.m. to haul them in a wagon. The PD became his only full-time civilian employer. He worked at the newspaper from 1938 to 1983, retiring as chief photographer.
Matjasic (pronounced muh-JAY-sic) limped from bullet and shrapnel wounds incurred while crawling through the sands of Taipan, photographing the U.S. invasion during World War II. That didn't stop him, after returning to Cleveland, from rushing into riots and more, snapping on the run. He once ran alongside police chasing a gunman suspected of robberies. The suspect finally turned the gun on himself.
Matjasic could shoot joy, too. He photographed the inaugurations of presidents Nixon and Carter. He shot his daughter, Judy, and her collie playing in the family's Euclid home for a Better Living section cover on recreation rooms.
Jack Nicklaus once said his favorite picture of himself on the links was Matjasic's shot of the native Ohioan carrying his 4-year-old son, Gary, on his shoulder after winning the Professional Golf Association Championship at the Canterbury Golf Club in 1973. The photographer signed a copy, and Nicklaus hung it at home in Florida.
Matjasic covered both joy and woe with the Indians, photographing the World Series in 1948 and 1954.
Colleagues said he led the photo department like a Marine, chomping a cigar, barking orders, making sure tables were cleaned and sinks scrubbed. "He was a strong leader who made sure we got our work done as well as we could," said photographer David I. Andersen.
Matjasic was born in Cleveland and raised on Addison Road in a family of six. During the Depression, the family sometimes earned less than $10 per week. So Ray started delivering papers for $7.50 per week. Not owning galoshes, he would dry his shoes in the oven between deliveries and school.
He graduated John Hay High School and joined the PD's circulation department. He rose to district manager, befriended photographers after work and learned their trade.
Then he joined the Marines and photographed them in action across the South Pacific. At Taipan in 1944, he took shrapnel in the knee and, while lying in the sand for six hours, took a bullet in the hip.
In 1945, he joined the PD's photo department, shooting on crutches at first. He rose to chief photographer in 1964.
His many scoops included an exclusive invitation to the home of the slain Marlene Steele and her husband, Robert, a Euclid municipal judge, later convicted of conspiring in her death. He won more than 50 local, state or national awards, including best in show from the Columbia School of Journalism and a berth in the Cleveland Press Club Hall of Fame.
Matjascic lectured on photography at Ohio State, Bowling Green State, Kent State and elsewhere. In 1969, he helped found the Cleveland Chapter of the Marine Corps Combat Correspondents Association and became its vice president. He liked to fish in Lake Erie, New York's Lake Chautauqua, Florida, Mexico and elsewhere.
He left Euclid for the Slovenian Home about 10 years ago. He lost his wife, the former Emma Pelcar, in July and their son, Raymond Jr., in October. The son had retired from his father's old circulation department at the PD.
Raymond Aloysius Matjasic
1920-2010
Survivors: daughter, Judith Smith of Willougby, and three grandchildren.
Funeral: pending
Contributions: Slovene Home for the Aged, 18621 Neff Road, Cleveland OH 44119, slovenehome.org.
Arrangements: Monreal Funeral Home
Former PD photographer Bill Wynne recalls:
I am sorry to hear my colleague Ray Matjasic has died. It has been most difficult for Ray and his family the past few years, Another of our great newspaper journalists has passed and we mourn each of them for the loss of their own personal contributions in communicating whether by keyboard or camera. Our whole life experiences influence how each of us see, judge, and interpret what we are witnessing. A photographer keyed to grasp instantly a situation, Ray's greatest attributes were first tenaciousness, beat the competition. This followed, whether in chess, checkers or cards , but particularly with cameras. And then interpretation, his communicating to readers, was implemented by pure instinct, He had a tough early life giving him a definite advantage. He recognized situations giving him insights in foreseeing what would unfold before him, resulting what is best expressed, by the old adage " a picture is worth a 1000 words. " May you rest in peace old friend.
Whitey Watzman wrote:
I'm really saddened to be reading about the death of Ray Matjasic, a guy I was paired with on many assignments over a long period of years.
Ray, in my opinion, was the greatest, a newsman down to the very depths of his soul, "the best street photographer" in Cleveland, as Bob Dorksen said. I like that phrase. It really sums up who Ray was. He could have been cast in the Ben Hecht play, "The Front Page."
But besides having smarts, he was a high-quality photographer, and his suggestions to me were always right on the nose, from the time he sort of took me under his wing when I became a reporter at the old P.D.
Whitey
No comments:
Post a Comment