There’s no definitive origin of the term “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but there’s certainly no doubt the expression applied to Jim Wilson.
If one thousand is the standard, then Jim’s were worth 10 times that many. Maybe even 100 times that many.
But as good a photographer as Jim was, he was even a better person. Of that there is no doubt. He had a face that broke into an easy smile, and he had a personality that matched. He may have been particular about the pictures he took — and those the paper took as well — but he was as relaxed a person as you’d ever want to meet.
We went back almost 50 years, to a time when we were young, eager, and willing to go anywhere and do anything to make our marks. Our common bond was United Press International, where we were “stringers” in our respective fields. I forget how or why it came up, but we both discovered we were from Lynn, and that he graduated from English with someone with whom I used to work.
That “someone” was kind of a character, and my earliest memory of him was of sharing a laugh or two about this guy.
Jim, who died last week, was always the perfect guy with whom to share a laugh. He always seemed to be in a good mood, even when he had plenty of reasons to be vexed or steamed about something — like when our off-site printer called and presented a sticky problem that was left for him to solve.
Jim and I both ended up at The Item in the late 1970s. The staff was not only trending younger, but was stacked with some pretty serious talent at its core. Jim was one of the most talented, and you just knew he was bound for bigger things. Soon enough, he landed at the Boston Globe, where he spent more than 30 years as an award-winning photographer.
Jim ultimately became deputy director of photography for the Globe, helping to supervise the paper’s World Series and Super Bowl coverage as well as the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
He took an early retirement from The Globe, and helped his wife Jane, run a candle business in Rowley, where he lived. But in 2014, current publisher Ted Grant took over The Item. Grant was also part of that 1970s-80s staff at the paper, and he had the idea of “getting the band back together.” He and I were already there, but he managed to lure both Jim and Bill Brotherton back to the fold (I always saw Jim as the cool saxophone player) for their second acts.
As our chief operating officer, Jim not only helped our fledgling photographers learn the business, he handled a lot of the day-to-day dealings with printers and other vendors.
Once again, our careers intersected, and we became even better friends. As a news person, Jim was a healthy mixture of old and new school. He and his police radio were never far apart, and I, as news director, could count on texts at all hours of the day and night from him about local stories he’d picked up from the scanner. In fact, there were times I wished he wasn’t quite so conscientious, such as at 11 p.m. on July 4 one year when he informed me of a quintuple shooting in East Lynn. I could get exasperated and tell him to give it a rest, but I also knew we needed someone like him to make sure we were covered.
At the same time, Jim understood the newer aspects of the business, and kept an eye on the on-line product as well as the traditional.
I also recall the time I proudly showed him a picture I took for a story I was doing. He looked at it, complimented me on my initiative, and then pointed out the tree growing out of the top of the subject’s head.
“You never want to do that,” he said, kindly. “Don’t have things growing out of people’s heads.”
For a guy whose job definition here definitely did not involve shooting spot news photos, he was never averse to pitching in. And – as we all discovered so many times – he always found a solution to all those sticky deadline situations.
Mornings at The Item weren’t complete if Jimmy didn’t stop by my office for a chat. We’d close the door so that it looked as if we were doing something important, and just talk about anything and everything. Those chats kind of gave my day some direction.
Jim had a keen sense of what people needed, and had the ability to come through. If you needed a laugh, he’d provide it. If you needed some advice, he could give it. If you needed a killer picture for the lead page, he could get it.
Rest in peace, Jim. If anyone deserves it, it’s you.
