The Times News family lost Bob Ford, our photographer extraordinaire, who passed away last week.

Since I began writing and reporting for this newspaper, I have had the privilege of getting to know some wonderful TN people, and none more so than Bob.

When I first met him, I was immediately fascinated by his artistic abilities with a camera. Bob sat at his desk in the Times News office shuffling through the pictures on his computer he had taken. I stood over his shoulder and I saw why this man had won so many awards for his photographic brilliance. Jaw-dropping stop action shots of a high school baseball player with his swinging bat meeting the ball on the sweet spot of the barrel, and whether it be a football in the air about to enter the fingertips of a leaping wide receiver or a volleyball about to be slammed over the net by a striker, his camera froze forever in time what had passed through the human eye in merely a second.

Bob’s eye of the tiger would capture a young tennis player’s determined expression on her face as she swung her racket and the exhaustion of a cross-country runner as he labored toward the finish line of a 5K race.

Yet, stop-action sports pictures were only one of his camera skills. His repertoire included brilliant photos of colorful sunsets, fields of flowers, placid lakes, birds in flight and his spectacular photos of the town of Jim Thorpe lit up at night during Christmastime.

Seasoned photographers are opportunists. They are camera ready, 24/7, searching to seize a moment of life and preserve its story for eternity, and none did it better than Bob Ford.

I recall my interview with World War II hero Clarence Smoyer in 2019. Bob was there with his camera circling Clarence like a sculptor prepares his hands to form his creation, looking for the perfect angle, the right light to catch the memories inside the man who fought in a war 75 years ago. Bob’s long lens was another of his appendages, a third arm if you will. He painted life using shutter speeds and aperture settings as his brushes. I have thought his brilliant photographs were of such high caliber that they would gain the approval of the chief editor of National Geographic magazine.

If you knew him well, you would know the paradox of the man who stood behind the camera was the same man who sat behind the tavern bar. One Bob Ford dazzled you by filtering still life with his lens and the other Bob Ford smacked you in the face with his unfiltered tongue.

He was the Don Rickles of the Times News staff. Once Bob started to insult me, I liked him even more. He shot from his mouth as he did from his camera, quick and brilliant, and he made no apologies if you liked neither.

Whenever I entered the sports department office, I soon lost my purpose for going there. I began laughing so hard at Bob’s mockery of everyone and his telling of off-color jokes that even made the ladies smile. He spared no one with his bow and arrow insults he shot over the office cubicles. Bob was the unofficial stand-up comedian of the Times News office who sat down in his chair and fired off one funny after another.

American poet and author Anthony Liccione wrote, “It’s not the appearance that makes a man, it’s the man that makes an appearance.” When Bob appeared at a sports event carrying his bag strapped over his shoulder and his long lens in his camera case, he might sneak in a shot of an unsuspecting TN sports writer yawning in the gym bleachers and he’d take the time to make an athletic director laugh with his sarcastic wit.

Irish dramatist Sean O’Casey said, “Laughter is wine for the soul - laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness - the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living.” Ten minutes spent with Mr. Ford and no matter what your day was about, you left his presence feeling that life is worth living.

Bob was our “Academy Award” winner for the state of Pennsylvania in the category of excellence in photography. A perennial recipient of the press awards representing the Times News, he captured three more prizes in 2020. He won second place in the sports action for a photo of a diving football catch, and he swept the category for graphic/photo illustration with first place for the Times News Girls Tennis Player of the Year, and second place for Boys Tennis Player of the Year.

I own a very special photograph Bob took of my son poised to throw a baseball as a member of Jim Thorpe’s baseball team.

Another brilliant talent of Bob’s was cooking gourmet meals. On this past Christmas night, he posted a picture of his bacon-wrapped chicken drumstick lollipops on Facebook. Of course, he displayed a tantalizing image of the food on his plate that made you hungry even if you weren’t before.

Australian entrepreneur Rachael Bermingham said, “Every day in every way we are leaving our mark.”

Bob’s legacy is in the gift of his pictures he leaves to all of us, his magical mark stamped with his extraordinary expertise and his infectious personality.

He leaves us this message, too.

Live life to the fullest and find the time to laugh every day.

Bob Ford the brilliant. Rest in peace, my friend.

Rich Strack can be reached at richiesadie11@gmail.com.