George Story didn't mind playing those tell-us-something-interesting-about-yourself party games. He'd grin and announce that he once had been photographed nude in a national magazine.
The editors of Life backed up his claim every decade or so for more than 60 years by rerunning the eye-catching photo and reminding readers that Story, '58, had appeared in the magazine's debut edition, November 23, 1936. Story, who died April 4, was only seconds old when a photographer slipped into the delivery room of a Portland, Ore., hospital and snapped a photo later headlined "Life Begins." "Several more pictures were taken that day, and in one you can see that he's obviously a little boy," says Story's widow, Judy, who lives in Kailua, Hawaii. "But I guess it was too risqué to use in those days."
A new photo of Story was supposed to appear in the farewell issue of Life, which ceased publishing in May. But in what the magazine's editors described as a "sad and altogether strange" convergence of events, Story died of congestive heart failure two days before a Life photographer was scheduled to take his picture. The magazine's headline this time: "A Life Ends."
