Renowned press photographer and Club member Ed Wergeles dies

Ed Wergeles, an award-winning, globe-trotting photographer and editor for both Newsweek and Forbes, and a National Press Club member for more than 60 years, died in Solvang, Calif., Jan. 6 shortly before his 94th birthday.

By the time he was 12, Wergeles had his own darkroom and was hooked on photography, his daughter, Wendy Wergeles said as she reviewed biographical notes of her father that her mother, Merry Hannula Wergeles, had put together. He joined the New York Journal in 1935 as a copy boy. One night while he was still attending high school, he was sent out to photograph a murder scene. When the photo made the front page, he knew his career would be in photography, she said.

During World War II, Wergeles served as a photographer in the Signal Corps, shooting photos in the Atlantic and Caribbean areas as well as in New Guinea and the Philippines, where he put out a two-color company newspaper. One of his photos made the cover of Yank Magazine. He witnessed the surrender of Japanese Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita and covered his arraignment for war crimes.

After the war, Wergeles joined Newsweek, where he became chief photographer. In the 15 years he worked there he was responsible for more than half of its cover photos, his daughter said.

“His beat was the Free World,” she said. “He felt the heat of an atomic test in Yucca Flats, Nev., photographed earthquakes and revolutions, photographed Queen Elizabeth’s coronation and Pope Pius XII’s funeral, and was one of the first U.S. journalists to meet Juan and Eva Peron in Argentina.”

He was a National Press Club member at least since 1952, she said after rummaging through a box of his old membership cards and finding that as the oldest one. The Club was his special spot whenever he was in Washington, and he regaled her with stories, including one about a late-night fight in the bar that the bartender remembered 20 years later.

Wergeles won a National Headliner Award for a photograph he took of President Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev during the premier’s 1959 tour of the United States that included an NPC luncheon speech.