Social Networking Serendipity
Yesterday a friend posted an incredible photo on Facebook that hit me quite hard. It was a Pulitzer Prize winning photo from 2006 taken by Todd Heisler of The Rocky Mountain News. Caption:
The night before the burial of her husband’s body, Katherine Cathey refused to leave the casket, asking to sleep next to his body for the last time. The Marines made a bed for her, tucking in the sheets below the flag. Before she fell asleep, she opened her laptop computer and played songs that reminded her of “Cat,” and one of the Marines asked if she wanted them to continue standing watch as she slept. “I think it would be kind of nice if you kept doing it,” she said. “I think that’s what he would have wanted.”
The photo itself is wrenching for numerous reasons. The stoic presence of the Marine watching over his fallen comrade and his comrade’s wife. The wife wanting to spend as much time as possible with her fallen husband before he is laid to rest. I’ve paid very close attention to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and frankly was surprised I had never seen this series of images before.
A couple hours passed and I received a message from a close friend about the image. The Marine standing guard was a close relative. He offered a few more details regarding the circumstances, but asked to keep any info private out of respect for his relative, who was not identified in the image. Shortly after that my friend, photographer Jason Lindsey, posted a comment about Todd Heisler. He and Heisler went to ISU together, worked together, and remain good friends.
I had a hard time wrapping my head around this series of events. Amazing, award winning photo, and I have a two-degrees-of-separation connection to a subject and the photographer. Sometimes the world is indeed a small place, made smaller by this crazy thing we call social networking.
