George Clarke, pioneering WJAR photographer, dies

One of NBC 10’s pioneer broadcasters has passed away.

George Clarke, the station’s first news photographer, has died at age 82. 

Clarke worked at WJAR for 36 years. He explained how he got hired in 1953.

“I happened to have my own camera, and I knew how to process the film at home. So, I wrote a letter to the station managers and I said, ‘How’s this for an idea? I can take the pictures of an event the same day, and process the film the same day, so you can put it on the air the same day.‘ That was something unheard of at the time,“ Clarke said.

Almost right away, Clarke was able to chronicle, on film, some of this area’s biggest news stories. 

During Hurricane Carol in 1954, he took pictures from a boat on the flooded streets of downtown Providence.  He watched the sinking of the Andrea Doria off our shores in 1956.

Clarke kept his journalistic cool until much later, when the awful reality of what George, the newsman, had filmed reached George, the compassionate human being.

“We circled around a few times and the Andrea Doria was tilted over quite a bit. We knew it was going to sink,“ he said.

Clarke was also the photographer who gave us that first aerial view from a helicopter of how the Blizzard of 1978 paralyzed the city of Providence and the state of Rhode Island.

Clarke was the photographer for the station’s first color broadcast on Oct. 27, 1963. It was a tour of the Rhode Island State House.

During his long career, Clarke also covered many, more routine stories, and he was always willing to help guide the station’s reporters, especially the newer ones, with his knowledge of the area and his experience covering the day’s news.