Presidents' days in Boston
Leslie Jones had a long career as a news photographer. Among other things, he took photos of presidents from Roosevelt to Kennedy. On this Presidents Day, here are some of his photos.
William Howard Taft at Harvard Stadium:
President Wilson and then Gov. Coolidge:
President Hoover at the Parkman Bandstand:
FDR and Mayor Curley in 1934:
President Truman campaigning in an open car with Mayor Curley:
President Eisenhower on the Esplanade:
Future President Kennedy with Gov. Paul Dever and Cardinal Richard Cushing at Dever's birthday party in 1957:
Future President Nixon and wife Pat in a motorcade by the Common in 1952:
Photos posted under this Creative Commons license.
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Comments
Huh
I always assumed Leslie Jones was a woman.
Leslie Jones
The photographer with a camera and a banana
More photos of Leslie Jones.
Thanks for both this page & the link to L. Jones
It is so good to put a face with the photos I've admired for so long. He looks like he might have been a fun person. Now, I have to go and learn more about him.
I should have Googled
I love old photographs and the ones you've posted from him here on UHub over the years have been fantastic.
http://www.lesliejonesphotography.com/
And to think
That photo of Jones with the banana shows one of his smaller cameras. The big one in his right hand in this other photo is an absolute monster (a Fairchild K-20 aerial recon camera). I know from personal experience that the lens alone weighs in at about 8lbs, and is slightly radioactive (the glass was dosed with thorium to improve sharpness).
This would get so many internet points had it existed
This guy clearly had a great sense of humor
name gender shift
"Leslie" is one of those names that has gender-shifted from default-male to default-female over the last few decades, as names sometimes do. It's almost universally a woman's/girl's name these days but other famous male Leslies have included actor Leslie Nielsen (Airplane!, Police Squad) and Lt. Gen. Leslie R. Groves, who headed up the Manhattan Project. The swap appears to have occurred around the 1930s-1940s. Both Nielsen and Groves were born prior to 1930 (1926 and 1896, respectively).
Oddly, I can't think of any names that have shifted from default-female to default-male--it's apparently always a male->female change that happens. "Carroll/Caryl/Carol", "Ashley", "Madison", "Taylor", "Aubrey". "Kennedy" enjoyed brief popularity as a boys' name in the 1950s-early 60s before being reborn as a girls' name in the 1980s. (I was going to blame the MTV VJ for that one--name popularity often tracks pop culture and celebrities--but she became a VJ in 1992 according to Wikipedia, postdating the popularity of it for girl-babies by a good bit.)
Leslie = male
Lesley = female
Kind of the Francis/Frances problem.
Just don't call him
Shirley.
President Taft
Also laid the cornerstone for the Central/ Huntington Ave YMCA building near Northeastern when it was first unde construction. I wonder if this was the same trip?
Taft
Now there was a president. Those were the days.