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November 16, 2009

STEPHANIE SALTER: Remembering a man who soared high and proud

By Stephanie Salter

TERRE HAUTE — My friend Bob Cameron died this past week. Among the many things I learned from our friendship was to never again hear that someone really old has passed, then respond with a shallow, “Oh, well, sounds like he had a good, long run. I guess it was time.”

Some people are simply incapable of getting old enough to make their departure an oh-well. Bob was one of those people.

He was 98 (and change) when he finally “went on ahead,” as his Iowa mother always put it. His death, Nov. 10, made the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle, the newspaper of record in his adopted, beloved city by the bay.

The Chronicle afforded Robert W. Cameron such valuable journalistic real estate because of his professional achievements. For all intents and purposes, he invented the genre of aerial photography art books — “coffee table” books — in 1969 with his first “Above” photo collection.

The “Above” series of great cities and natural wonders, such as Yosemite National Park, Lake Tahoe and Big Sur, eventually numbered 17. Some 3 million of his books are in print, including his wildly successful “The Drinking Man’s Diet.” He published them all under the auspices of his own Cameron & Co.

Riding shotgun in dozens of helicopters over four decades, Bob captured the detail and the whole of Paris, London, New York, Chicago, Mexico City, Los Angeles, San Diego, Washington, D.C., Las Vegas, Seattle, Hawaii and, of course, San Francisco, which rated three separate books. He did “Above Yosemite” because the park is as spectacular from the air as it is on the ground. He did “Above Mackinac Island” because one of his four children has a home there.

Word lover that he was, Bob enlisted the talents of stellar writers (all of them friends) to provide text for each of his Above books. They included Alistair Cooke, who wrote for “Above London,” Paul Goldberger and George Plimpton, who shared duties for “Above New York,” and John F. Kennedy’s one-time press secretary, Pierre Salinger, who not only wrote for “Above Paris,” but pulled unprecedented strings to clear air space for a few hours so Bob could shoot The City of Lights.

Bob’s last trip aloft was just a few months ago. He was blind in both eyes to all but shadows and shapes. Stenosis of the spine had bent him into an inverted L, and a bum esophagus had whittled his gourmand’s appetite to almost nothing. Still an inverate news hound, however, he had heard that San Francisco’s “crookedest street,” Lombard, had been decked out in pink-and-white stripes to promote an anniversary edition of the game, Candyland. He was determined to get a shot of that and several other areas of the city for his Above San Francisco calendar series.

“I had a list,” he told me, 11 days before he died.

That telephone conversation, which I tape recorded, was the final installment of a three-year oral history project Bob and I had begun during a visit to his daughter Jane Manoogian’s house on Mackinac. The 10 cassettes and their typed transcripts cover his life, from his childhood in his native Des Moines to that last helicopter flight over San Francisco.

The intended destination of Bob’s oral history was the University of California’s Bancroft Library. Funding difficulties within the library, I recently learned, might alter that. If so, it will be Bancroft’s loss. Wherever the rich spoken history of Robert W. Cameron ends up — and I have complete faith it will find the perfect home — it will be welcomed as the consummate treasure it is.

Unlike all his famous pals — add Louis Armstrong, Ansel Adams and Bing Crosby to the roster — I didn’t meet Bob until he was well into his 80s. It was at a desultory press party for a restaurant opening in San Francisco’s financial district. He was chatting with one of the few people there I knew (or wanted to talk to), a public relations pro, Suzy Strauss.

From the instant I shook his hand, I was mesmerized. About 30 minutes later, when Bob announced he was hailing a cab and going home, I followed him out to the sidewalk and blurted, “I never do this — but will you have dinner with me sometime?”

He loved to tell that story. He repeated it the very last time I spoke with him, Nov. 5, when we said our farewells in a teary phone call. “What if I’d never gone to that party?” he said, and I shuddered at the thought.

The role I filled in Bob’s long, crowded life was not a common one. He already had two daughters and two sons and didn’t need any surrogate kids. Widowed, he didn’t need any romantic ladyfriends, either, because he already had one, a beautiful and captivating woman named Jeffreys Corner, who he adored and who adored him. She frequently flew up from L.A. to visit him and was at his side Tuesday when he died.

In some ways, I was like a niece he hadn’t realized existed. For me, he was like an uncle you only see in the movies: accomplished, glamorous, sophisticated, well-traveled, but with a generous and down-to-earth spirit that reflected his Midwestern roots.

Bob was also a lifelong political liberal, which cemented our friendship as surely as did our love for San Francisco. He relished telling people — especially the conservative Republican people who dominated the memberships of his exclusive golf club and his posh downtown social club — that he had voted for Franklin D. Roosevelt every single time FDR had run for president.

In the dozen years I knew Bob, he shared an amazing amount of his bountiful life with me, from his family and Jeff to his work. One glorious May day in 2002, I got to go up with him in a helicopter and watch him shoot San Francisco and Western Marin County. His eyesight already was failing, but he expertly guided the pilot — “Go up another 200 feet” or “North just a few degrees and hang for 20 seconds” — and the finished shots were fabulous.

The last time I saw Bob, Oct. 18, he was in a hospital bed in his Pacific Heights penthouse in San Francisco. Although he’d lost considerable weight, his once 6-foot-1-inch frame still stretched long. It took me a couple of minutes to identify who he resembled in the afternoon light.

“It’s a movie star,” I told him, searching my visual memory banks. Finally, he turned in profile, and I got it. “John Barrymore,” I said, and Bob blushed and chuckled at the compliment.

I was full of them that day, partly because I’d just seen his final exhibit in downtown San Francisco, huge enlargements (like 6 feet by 9 feet) of 55 environmental-themed photos he had taken of land, sea and sky in the Pacific Rim. It is a stunning tribute to his talent.

Mostly, though, I was bubbling with compliments because I knew I would never see him again. Hospice was coming on the case and he was a few days from refusing any nutrition. (As his son, Tony, later shared, Bob did enjoy ice chips lightly coated in single malt scotch up to the time he slipped into unconsciousness.)

Four days after that visit, I was back in Indiana and we did our final taping. One of my questions was about that late-summer shoot above San Francisco. He couldn’t see and could barely walk, but he completed his list.

“It was the most thrilling day of my blind life,” he said, wryly. A friend had gone up with him to load his cameras with film, but instinct and experience were his primary aides.

“I know this city so well,” he said, “and I’ve been above it so many times.” He shot from memory, and the pictures were, as usual, terrific.

In his 98 years and seven months, Bob Cameron lived boldly and big. Excellent fortune allowed me to share a small portion of that life and to be counted among the people he called “friend.” I wasn’t ready to say goodbye.



Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.

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