ROCCO MORABITO (1920–2009)

Rocco Morabito, whose “Kiss of Life” photograph of a utility worker saving the life of a fellow lineman won a Pulitzer Prize for the Jacksonville Journal in 1968 died Sunday, reports the Florida Times-Union. His dramatic 1967 photo of an apprentice lineman dangling from a pole while being given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation appeared in newspapers around the world and won the Pulitzer for spot-news photography. “He was a brilliant, instinctive photographer,” said Charlie Patton, a Times-Union staff writer who worked with Morabito at the Journal in the late 1970s. Another noteworthy Morabito photograph in 1958 showed children in an elementary school reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Standing with those children, head erect, eyes forward, paws over heart, was a pet rabbit. Life Magazine devoted a full page to that now-iconic photograph.