Stan Stearns, Photographer of JFK Jr.'s Salute to His Father, Has Died.
Stan Stearns, 76, who took the iconic photograph of John F. KennedyJr. saluting his father's coffin during the slain president's 1963 funeral, died Friday of cancer at a hospice in Harwood, Md., said his son Jay.
As a photographer for United Press International, Stearns was assigned to cover John F. Kennedy's funeral on Nov. 25, 1963. He was standing outside a Washington cathedral with about 70 photographers when he saw Jacqueline Kennedy lean down to whisper to her son, who turned 3 that day. The boy then stepped forward as the flag-draped coffin rolled by.
"His hand went up, it went down; one exposure, that's all I got," Stearns told the Baltimore Sun in 1999. "Seconds, that's all it was. And I knew I had the picture of the funeral."
Other still photographers missed the picture because they had focused on Jacqueline Kennedy or the president's coffin, Stearns later said.
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-passing-20120304,0,5185400.story