Arnold Hardy

News Obituary Article

STONE MOUNTAIN: Arnold Hardy, 85, took Pulitzer-winning photo

By KAY POWELL

Arnold Hardy, the first amateur photographer to win a Pulitzer Prize, was a reluctant celebrity.

His photograph of a woman plunging from a window of the burning Winecoff Hotel on Dec. 7, 1946, is the defining image of the nation's deadliest hotel fire.

For Mr. Hardy, then a 24-year-old Georgia Tech graduate student and lab assistant, the photograph, the publicity and the Pulitzer Prize were bittersweet, said his son Glen Hardy of Decatur.

"He stood on the sidewalk and watched people plummet to their deaths," his son said. "He had almost a post-traumatic response to that.

"It wasn't just a lucky snapshot," his son said. "It was technically a very complicated photograph to take. He had to consider lighting, temperature. He was working hard to get that photograph, to capture a moving object in pitch black darkness. He tweaked his camera to its limits."

Not long after, Mr. Hardy turned down a job from The Associated Press, married and founded a business that designs and manufactures X-ray equipment.

"The only pictures I've taken since then," Mr. Hardy said in a 2000 Atlanta Journal-Constitution article, "have been family and vacations."

Mr. Hardy, 85, of Stone Mountain died Wednesday at Emory University Hospital of complications following hip surgery. The funeral is 2 p.m. today --- the anniversary of the fire --- at A.S. Turner & Sons.

Mr. Hardy had earned his degree in physics, and photography was his hobby. He bought a $200 Speed Graphic that folded into a box carrying case. To pay for it, he thought he could earn freelance money shooting Tech athletic events.

On that fateful Saturday, he returned to his Midtown rooming house about 3 a.m. after a date. He heard sirens screaming, called the fire department to get the location, grabbed his camera and headed to the Peachtree Street hotel where 280 guests were registered.

He had five flashbulbs, four after one of them burst from the cold. He took three pictures. Then, with his final flash bulb, he trained his lens on the mezzanine where bodies were bouncing on the awning and striking the marquee. He noticed a woman who was trying to climb down a rope and lost her grip, the article said.

Mr. Hardy captured her fall, her dress flying above her head and her white underpants stark against the hotel. He developed his film at Tech, and it was about 6 a.m. when he saw the image of the woman in free fall. He called AP and sold the picture for $300.

Mr. Hardy continued his freelance photography until an industrial fire led him to retire his press card. "I went out there and hung around a while; there wasn't anything worth shooting," he said. "But the next day my picture appeared in the paper with some caption about the Winecoff photographer looking for another prize." Mr. Hardy did not want people to think of him as some kind of ambulance-chaser.

He used the Speed Graphic only for personal photographs until the camera was stolen in the 1970s, his son said. After that, "he would find some old camera at a garage sale for $3 and take it apart and fix it and take a few pictures with it, then get another one."

Mr. Hardy was a perfectionist, and that influenced his career making X-ray equipment. He spent so much time perfecting his designs and equipment, he had to sell to high-end businesses such as medical equipment suppliers or airlines, said his son, who bought Hardy Manufacturing Co. in Decatur from his father.

"He always was designing or building some piece of medical equipment or a treehouse for me," he said. After retiring in 1987, Mr. Hardy, who enjoyed sailing, designed and began building a mini-houseboat but never launched it.

"One thing he took great pride in," his son said, "is that after his photograph was published worldwide, fire codes were changed all over the country and maybe the world."

Survivors include his wife, Lorraine Hardy; a daughter, Nancy Cooper of Stockbridge; three stepsons, John F. Weber III of Stockbridge, Warren D. Weber of Seattle and Keith D. Weber of Austin, Texas; five grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

Staff writer Jim Auchmutey contributed to this article.

© 2007 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution