MALCOLM EMMONS

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Malcolm W. Emmons was born Jan 8 1935 growing up in Kennebunk ,Maine. During his childhood he helped his family ‘save the farm’ in 1947 where there was a series of forest fires in York County that destroyed a total area of 175,000 acres of wooded land.  As a young man he joined the Marine Corp where after becoming the top of his class, he chose Aerial Photography in the Naval School as his service career. It was during his career in the Marines he worked in Japan and Korea. This profession served him for the rest of his life.

Once Honorably discharged, he lived in Washington DC working for News-Clark as an etcher. In D.C. he met his love of his life Mary Zimmerman, marrying her and moving to Columbus, Ohio to graduate from The Ohio State University. While in school he captured images for the yearbook, The Makio, and the newspaper, The Lantern. During summer breaks he worked at North American Aviation in the Photo Lab. In the winter of 1963 he received his diploma from the university in Agriculture.

Sport Magazine gave him his first big break with a photo spread of Jerry Lucas, center court at St John Arena. Malcolm started to build his career as a lot of success came to Ohio sports. From Cleveland Browns titles, Cincinnati Royals with Oscar Robertson to Ohio State Buckeyes Men’s Basketball National Champions the demand for his images started to become a serious business. Sport, Sporting News, Inside Sport, Football Digest, Baseball Illustrated, Dell Sports, Street & Smith started becoming regular clients. Later in his career he met David Boss, who had pioneered the Creative Services division of NFL Properties and convinced Malcolm to become a regular contributor.

In 1968 Malcolm won 1st place honors for the first ever photo contest at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He repeated the feat in 1971 & 1974. Some other notable projects were co-producing The Battling Buckeyes Book and working with Marketcom to produce Sports Illustrated posters. One of Malcolm’s images of Jerry West was used by an artist to produce the NBA’s logo.

Malcolm mainly worked freelance, believing that owning his images was far more valuable than losing all the images to a contract job. The rare contracts he did take he negotiated to keep a portion of the game take. With a strong work ethic, Malcolm also took on a fulltime photography job at The Ohio State University’s Extension Service.
 
In his personal life Malcolm has two sons, Malcolm Jr., and Matthew residing in Delaware Ohio. He enjoyed being a historian of military conflicts, taking the family to many Civil War battlefields for summer vacations. With a common love of military strategy a great friendship with Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes was formed. Their offices were not far apart on campus, the two enjoyed brown bag lunches together during the off season. Though they worked with the sport of football, rarely was this discussed; it was all about military strategy in battles of the past.

The Sporting News editor Lowell Reidenbaugh had a great working relationship with Malcolm and relied on his ability to capture a sporting event. This combination produced more than 300 Sporting News covers for Malcolm during his career.

Malcolm was a coveted few that covered all Super Bowl’s through XXIII after which he passed in the summer of 1989 at the age of 54.

David Boss | Malcolm Emmons | Manny Rubio | Herb Weitman

Darryl Norenberg | Rod Hanna | Richard Mackson | Dick Raphael