Grover Wallace Cummings

1942 - 2025

News story
By Mike Sigov
Blade Staff Writer

Grover Wallace Cummings, one of the Midwest's first Black photojournalists, who was a former Blade photographer and an Air Force veteran of the Vietnam War era, died May 14 at the Atlanta VA Medical Center. He was 82.

He died after two years on dialysis, his son, Wade Harrison, said.

Trained as a photographer while serving in the Air Force in the early 1960s, Mr. Cummings was a photographer at The Blade from the mid-1960s through at least 1977.

"He understood light," Robert Smith, a lifelong friend, said. "[And] this guy knew how to tell the story with one click of the lens. He was keen on that, really keen on that."

The photos that Mr. Cummings took for The Blade received professional honors on multiple occasions.

In 1968, he won first place in a photojournalism category from the Ohio Newspaper Association.

In 1970, a photo he took made the archive of Pictures of the Year International, a program of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and the Missouri School of Journalism.

Then, in 1971, two of his photos were recognized by the Ohio News Photographers Association.

After The Blade, Mr. Cummings worked freelance for area African-American newspapers.

He was also a staff photographer at The Danberry Co., a Toledo real estate brokerage and development company, until he retired around 2011 before moving to Atlanta in 2013 to be closer to his children.

Additionally, he was a paid hall monitor and then an assistant basketball coach at Central Catholic High School in the 1990s.

When not working, he liked to volunteer for the Black community.

"He had the football mentality and he volunteered significantly about the community," Mr. Smith said.

That volunteering included being instrumental in establishing the African American Legacy Project of Northwest Ohio in 2004, he said. The nonprofit pledges "to stimulate the intellectual, socioeconomic, and participatory growth in communities wherein African-Americans reside" and bills itself as a keeper of "a part of Toledo's nearly lost histories."

"He taught us how to frame [a shot] and spent time with us to ensure image quality," Mr. Smith said.

Mr. Harrison, a professional painter, said his father's photography inspired him to become an artist.

"He captured life, he captured the action of life, and he captured the youth," Mr. Harrison said. "I love his black-and-white work especially."

Born Dec. 18, 1942, in Toledo to Annie and William Cummings, he attended Waite High School, where he played fullback on the varsity football team. He later took classes at the American School of Correspondence, a private distance-education middle school in Lansing, Ill.

"He didn't grow up with a silver spoon in his mouth, so he understood the difference between the haves and the have nots," Mr. Smith said. "... People we grew up with remained his friends forever."

Another close friend, Ralph Kimbers, a former teammate, said Mr. Cummings was a good football player who was well liked by teammates.

"I'll miss my buddy," he said.

In January, 1961, Mr. Cummings enlisted in the Air Force, where he was a photographer and then was an Air Force photographer on an air base in Florida during the Vietnam War until receiving an honorable discharge in January, 1965.

He then briefly worked at the former Interlake Iron Corp. plant on Front Street before getting hired at The Blade.

In his free time, he liked to be with his family and friends. He also enjoyed riding a bicycle, taking long walks, and playing pool.

He was preceded in death by five siblings.

Surviving are his daughters, Bernardette Cummings and Rashonda Cummings; sons, Wade Harrison, Delmond Cummings, and Damen Cummings; eight grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

Arrangements are pending.