Among his earliest memories: his father's account of the day he heard Abraham Lincoln had been shot; among his most recent, the election of the nation's first black president.
The life of news photographer Hart Preston was epic with tales of the famous and infamous, the powerful and the powerless, the immediate and the far-flung. Preston died on July 20 in Santa Monica. He was 99.
An English major at Stanford, Preston, '32, cultivated a love of theater, wrote for the Chaparral and participated in that publication's social organization, the Hammer and Coffin. His Chappie escapades included a roaring night out with W. Somerset Maugham at Izzy's bar in San Francisco.
In 1938 he hit the open road with friend Charles Steinheimer, '36. The two documented a six-month journey through Mexico for Life magazine. Both were hired as staff photographers not long after the 17-page article appeared. Later, at Time, Preston photographed and wrote stories, and spent evenings with his journalism colleagues entertaining the likes of George Balanchine, John Steinbeck, Frank Sinatra and Walt Disney.
During World War II, Preston crisscrossed Africa and the Middle East on assignment. He accompanied goodwill ambassador and former presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, photographing meetings with Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran and French Gen. Charles de Gaulle. (The last was "one cold hombre," Preston observed in an unpublished memoir.)
After the war, Preston worked at Time under editor Whittaker Chambers around the time Chambers was accused of being a Soviet spy. In 1948 Preston became a speechwriter for Paul Hoffman, director of Paris operations for the Marshall Plan. While he never stopped taking pictures, he pursued many other careers, including writing books and plays, brokering produce, managing an art gallery and developing real estate in Costa Rica.
Preston is survived by his daughter, Heidi Landers; and a granddaughter.
