In the Midst of Life

Al Robbins, a 28-year-old stationery salesman and free-lance photographer, sometimes picks up extra money by selling spot news pictures to the New York Journal-American. One day last week, he was standing outside a Manhattan parochial school on his sales route, talking to a priest, when a youngster ran up and gasped: "Father, a little boy's been hit by a truck." Grabbing his camera from his car, Robbins ran after the priest.

They found seven-year-old Michael Nordquist lying in the street, where a coal truck had hit him as he stepped off the curb. Still clutched in Michael's hand was the change that a baker had given him a few minutes earlier; he had just picked out a cake for the party to celebrate his first communion the next day. As the priest, a nurse and a passer-by knelt to comfort Michael in the few minutes left of his life, Robbins shot five pictures. Generously, he offered two of them to his old friend Bob Wendlinger, 27, a free-lance photographer for the New York Daily Mirror whose own camera had suddenly jammed.

Next day, Al Robbins' best shot of the dying boy (see cut) made Page One of the Mirror. (Another Robbins picture of the same scene was on Page 20 of the Journal-American). Bob Wendlinger's byline was on the Mirror cut, but Robbins had the satisfaction of having taken a memorable picture, poignant with the tragedy that lurks on a city's streets.

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