“David Was One of Us”

I was sitting at my desk at the Detroit Free Press. It was a Monday morning. Or maybe it was a Tuesday. You’ll have to cut me some slack if my memory is a little hazy. It was nearly a quarter-century ago now.

Anyway, my editor had emerged from the morning play meeting where they discuss what should go in the next day’s newspaper. He strolled over and asked me if I had been paying attention to what was happening in North Dakota and Minnesota.

I knew that the Red River was flooding the city of Grand Forks. Apparently, I was about to learn a lot more. I was heading there. The editor must have caught the flash of dread on my face because he told me not to worry about what to do there. We’re sending Gilkey with you.

That would be David Gilkey.

***

He was never David. For me, it was always Gilkey. I never saw him without a ballcap, and usually, it was a tattered one. He had a way about him that radiated equal parts warmth and mischievousness. But he could also convey a quiet insistence — even stubbornness — about how a story should be reported.

In short, Gilkey was good. He was a photographer earning a reputation for someone with an uncanny knack for getting the right shot to complement stories. For reasons I can’t quite explain, there was a depth of humanity to his work. It’s why reporters like me loved him. Having Gilkey on an assignment always gave you a better chance of making the front page.

Within hours, we were on a plane to Fargo. Once there, we literally claimed the last available rental car and head north to Grand Forks. If I’m remembering correctly, the floodwaters by then had reached a couple of stories high in the downtown buildings. And because of electrical shorts, some buildings had caught fire above the waterline. Smoke was still seeping out of roofs and windows. It was like a scene from Dante’s Inferno come to life, and I’m pretty sure the first story I wrote carried that Biblical vibe.

That night in Grand Forks, Gilkey and I crashed on pews at a church where some residents, forced from their homes, had taken shelter. I was already panicking about what I would write next. (That’s what I do, by the way. I’m a worrier by nature.) Bill Clinton was arriving the next day. Maybe that’s our story? Gilkey scoffed. No way we’re going to that dog-and-pony show. He had struck up a conversation with a husband and wife while photographing people in the church. They had barely escaped their house with their young children. The father was going back early the next day to see what was left. We should ask him if we could go with him.

Thanks to Gilkey, we were in a small boat the following morning heading toward a half-submerged rural house. The man had to climb into a second-story window to get into his house. My recollection is that he found the family dog safe and waiting for him, so there was at least a little happiness to a crushingly sad story.

For the next week or so, Gilkey and I followed the rising waters north toward the Canadian border. He was behind the wheel and I tapped away on an old Radio Shack TRS-80 in the passenger seat. We stuck to backroads that connected sugar beet farms to avoid National Guard checkpoints. It wasn’t that Gilkey believed the rules shouldn’t apply to journalists. It was more that he had a keenly calibrated sense of when it’s better to ask for permission or beg for forgiveness later.

Gilkey wasn’t just driving. He was leading us to the best stories. I was just along for the ride.

Over the years, I would learn that the best photographers were great not because of their ability to get the best shot. Instead, their true gift was the ability to earn the trust of subjects that would put them in a position to take the great shot.

Strangers innately understood that Gilkey was good people. Even as they were dealing with the tragedy of watching their worldly possessions washed away, often they were willing to stop and talk to us in large part because they trusted this scruffy photographer.

Late one afternoon, when he wanted to get a photo of the floodwaters from a levee in the fading light, we were walking atop a crumbling dike. Gilkey told me if he slipped, make sure I grabbed the camera. It was one of these new-fangled digital ones and not the kind that uses film. I laughed. He responded: I’m serious. I can swim. But I can’t lose the camera. It cost a mint.

Later, he talked our way onto a National Guard truck heading to a small town along the border that was essentially cut off by the water. We spent 24 hours with holdout residents as they desperately constructed temporary barriers to save the town. As they worked feverishly through the middle of the night, I can still remember Gilkey climbing up on pieces of heavy equipment for a perch to get the perfect shot of people erecting metal plating with light reflecting off the water behind them.

Another night, we dozed in a freezing trailer. (Don’t ask me how we ended up there. I’ve forgotten.) I remember him telling me how he kept all the loose change he received in jars. His goal was to save up enough to buy a car.

I can honestly say that I didn’t enjoy one bit of covering that flood. I witnessed too much pain and suffering. But even then, I understood that I was in the presence of a much, much better journalist than myself. And I knew that I would be telling Gilkey stories for years to come.

***

I left the “Freep” a year or so later. Eventually, I landed at the San Jose Mercury News. Occasionally, Gilkey and I would run into each other on assignments. Once, of all places, it was before an NHL playoff game between the San Jose Sharks and Detroit Red Wings. We ate a pregame dinner together in the press room. He was the same old Gilkey. Still wearing a ballcap. (With less hair beneath it, I suspected.) Still carrying what seemed like a half-dozen cameras. Still making me smile.

And I remember kicking myself later for not asking him about the coins and if he ever saved enough for a car.

That was the last time I saw him. But he remained one of those people I had met on my journeys who would periodically pop into my head, unannounced.

I knew that Gilkey had gone to work for NPR at some point. He was traveling the world, covering conflicts and disasters, making the pain of the afflicted feel real to those of us who are more fortunate. You would look at his photos and think: there but for the grace of God go I.

And me? As the newspaper industry imploded, I joined the growing diaspora of ex-journalists. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my writing skillset transferred to the corporate world and found refuge at a series of technology companies. I was sitting at my desk in another one of those offices when, in 2016, I read on the Internet that an NPR photographer was one of two men killed by a rocket grenade in Afghanistan. I knew it was Gilkey even before I clicked on the link. My second thought was, why were you there? But I knew the answer.

Gilkey was there because that’s where the story was.

I’m writing this now, going on five years later, because a photo of Gilkey recently appeared on my Twitter timeline. Phil Klay, a combat veteran and exceptionally talented writer whom I admire, reposted an article. Written by two Afghans, they told about Gilkey’s heart. How he never seemed like an outsider. “David was one of us.”

That was Gilkey.

He made everyone feel like that.

You can see some of his work here. And here’s a story by a colleague on the third anniversary of his death that includes more of his photographs. Finally, his Wikipedia page does a great job of capturing the breadth and impact of his career.