by Rocco Morabito
This 1967 award-winning photo entitled “Kiss of Life” shows two power linemen, Randall Champion and J. D. Thompson, at the top of a utility pole. They had been performing routine maintenance when Champion brushed one of the high voltage lines at the very top. These are the lines that can be heard “singing” with electricity. Over 4000 volts entered Champion’s body and instantly stopped his heart (an electric chair uses about 2000 volts).
His safety harness prevented a fall, and Thompson, who had been ascending below him, quickly reached him and performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He was unable to perform CPR given the circumstances, but continued breathing into Champion’s lungs until he felt a slight pulse, then unbuckled his harness and descended with him on his shoulder.
Thompson and another worker administered CPR on the ground, and Champion was moderately revived by the time paramedics arrived. Champion survived and lived until 2002, when he died of heart failure at the age of 64. Thompson is still living.
Rocco Morabito (November 2, 1920 – April 5, 2009) was an American photographer who spent the majority of his career at the Jacksonville Journal.
Morabito won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography for “The Kiss of Life”, a Jacksonville Journal photo that showed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation between two workers on a utility pole. Randall G. Champion was unconscious and hanging upside down after contacting a high voltage line; fellow lineman J.D. Thompson revived him while strapped to the pole by the waist. Champion survived and lived until 2002, when he died of heart failure at the age of 64; Thompson is still living. The photograph was published in newspapers around the world.
He served in World War II in the Army Air Forces as a ball-turret gunner on a B-17. He returned after the war and worked for the Journal for 42 years, 33 of them as a photographer, until retiring in 1982. He died on April 5, 2009 while in hospice care.—WikiPedia
SEE ALSO: The Kiss of Life, 40 years later, 10 Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photos And Their Stories
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