By: Arnold Hardy, an amateur photographer who won the Pulitzer Prize for his photo of the nation's deadliest hotel fire, has died. He was 85.
According to A.S. Turner And Sons Funeral Home, Hardy died Wednesday at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta of complications following hip surgery. His funeral was Friday the 61st anniversary of the fire.
Hardy's photograph of a woman plunging from a window of the burning Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta on December 7th, 1946, became the defining image of the fire, a disaster that killed 119 people and prompted nationwide changes in fire safety.
Hardy was a 24-year-old Georgia Tech graduate student and lab assistant when he took the photo.
His son, Glen Hardy, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution the experience brought pain along with the fame.
His son told the newspaper, "He stood on the sidewalk and watched people plummet to their deaths. He had almost a post-traumatic response to that.
Hardy later turned down a job from the Associated Press, married and founded a business that designs and manufactures X-ray equipment.
Hardy said in an interview with the Atlanta newspaper in 2000, "The only pictures I've taken since then have been family and vacations."
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