Unhappy Triumph

It will be a long time before any U.S. parent forgets last fortnight's scarifying news picture of a little boy lying dead at his mother's feet on an Omaha street after a truck had crashed into his sled (TIME, Dec. 25). J. Harold Cowan, the man who took the picture, will never forget it.

Newsman Cowan, 34, a shy, stocky, serious Omaha World-Herald reporter-photographer who covers the police run on weekends, was sitting in Omaha's detective bureau when the accident call droned in over the radio. Racing down two flights of stairs to the pressroom, he grabbed his camera, ran for his car. Too rushed to put on his tire chains, he set off behind the police ambulance (which had chains) in a skidding, hair-raising, 75-block chase over slippery roads, through red lights, down an icy hill. At the bottom of the hill lay the boy. As the mother backed away from his bleeding body and another badly hurt boy was carried screaming to the ambulance, Photographer Cowan carefully focused his camera,* shot the picture.

Next day his photograph, distributed by A.P. wirephoto, was printed throughout the U.S., becoming a likely candidate for the 1944 Pulitzer Prize. But Cowan was far from happy. Editors and fellow reporters showered him with congratulations. Said Cowan: "I wish I hadn't been there."

Only a few days before, Reporter Cowan had gone coasting with his own two children, Jimmy, 4, and Nadine, 7, near the scene of the accident, and the sled had broken under his weight. Last week the broken sled was still in the repair shop. Said Father Cowan: "I think I'll leave it there."

*When the World-Herald's Photographer Earle L. Bunker took his famed 1943 news picture of a soldier's homecoming, Harold Cowan stood beside him, snapped the same picture. Result for Bunker: a Pulitzer prize. Result for Cowan, who had failed to focus properly: an unprintable blur.

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