During his 26 years as a photographer with the Chicago Tribune, Jack Mulcahy captured images of all aspects of city life, but his apparent kinship with animals brought some of his greatest acclaim.
When an errant golden eagle glided into the South Side in 1962 and tried to make a meal of a dog, Mr. Mulcahy was there snapping away. The photos of that unlikely wildlife encounter and the rescue attempt made by the dog’s owner and police appeared in newspapers around the world.
Mr. Mulcahy, 89, died of heart failure Saturday, Aug. 21, in Advocate Christ Medical Center, Oak Lawn.
A native of the South Side, Mr. Mulcahy attended Our Lady of Good Counsel School and graduated from Tilden Technical High School in 1932. He joined the Tribune the following year and worked as a copy boy until 1937.
He became a photo lab technician in 1938 and held that job until he became an Army combat photographer in the European theater during World War II. He distinguished himself for both his photography skills and valor.
Mr. Mulcahy was awarded the Bronze Star for risking his life in Italy to photograph a German artillery shell exploding just a few feet away. Noting the timing of the shells, he snapped his camera an instant after the burst. The photo became one of the emblematic images of the war.
Returning to the Tribune after the war, Mr. Mulcahy worked again as a photo technician before moving behind the camera in 1948. He retired from the newspaper in 1974.
During his career Mr. Mulcahy was known as a man who would go to great heights–and depths–in pursuit of a photograph. In 1949 he climbed a light pole to photograph and then rescue a sparrow that had gotten caught in the light. He descended in a cement bucket 100 feet into the bowels of the Prudential Building when it was under construction and rode a metal ball above the Marina City apartment towers.
“There was the workman putting the last bolt in, and Jack was right overhead,” said his cousin Michael. “That’s the sort of daredevil he was.”
“In his day and age, he was way beyond other photographers, he really was,” said Val Mazzenga, a retired Tribune photographer who worked with Mr. Mulcahy. “He was a great feature photographer, and he taught me a lot. And he was a gentleman at all times.”
At the time of Mr. Mulcahy’s retirement, another photographer, George Quinn, said his photographs “always seemed to have an element of humanness to them. Perhaps that’s why he was so attracted to innocent animals” as subjects for his work.
Mr. Mulcahy won many awards for excellence. In 1962, the year of the eagle attack, he was recognized as Chicago Press Photographer of the Year. He won three Edward Scott Beck Awards, which the Tribune gives annually to members of the news and photo staff for outstanding work.
The first of those was earned for his photo of an 11-year-old deaf mute boy reunited with his lost dog in 1953. The next year, he won another Beck Award with a photograph of Chicago gangster and Al Capone rival Roger Touhy imprisoned at Stateville penitentiary. He received his third Beck award in 1962.
Mr. Mulcahy is survived by two sisters, Eileen and Florence.
Visitation will be from 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. Tuesday at Andrew J. McGann & Son Funeral Home, 10727 S. Pulaski Road, Chicago. Mass will be said at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday in St. Bede the Venerable Catholic Church, 8300 S. Kostner Ave., Chicago.
