From the deadly beachheads of Normandy to the treacherous streets of Saigon, John G. Morris and the photographers whose work he edited were always at the heart of any news story they covered.
Mr. Morris was himself an eyewitness to the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, shortly after the senator claimed victory in the Democratic presidential primary in California. “He had just moved into an anteroom room cluttered with soggy coffee cups, half-eaten sandwiches and cigar butts when the shots rang out,” Mr. Morris wrote in a front-page account printed in The New York Times — the frantic nature of the moment underscored by that redundant “room” in his copy.
So it’s the height of paradox that Mr. Morris’s favorite news story was one he and his colleagues could only watch from more than 200,000 miles away: the landing of the first astronauts on the moon, on July 20, 1969.
Mr. Morris, who died on Friday at age 100, was the picture editor of The Times from 1967 to 1973. He is renowned for having secured a spot on Page 1 for two of the most indelible images of the Vietnam War, by Eddie Adamsand Nick Ut.
But in a 2006 interview with The Times for “The Last Word,” he said, “The happiest news event of my entire life and the page that was truly fun to close was that of the first walk on the moon, because that was the most positive story I think in my history, something that nobody could possibly feel was a bad, a terrible event.”
“And it’s very interesting that covering the moon walk meant total reliance on television,” Mr. Morris added.
Because of the timing of the lunar exploration, by Neil A. Armstrong, the civilian commander of Apollo 11, and Col. Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. of the Air Force, The Times had to use three versions of a 96-point headline.
“Men Land on Moon,” said the first edition, which was on press at 9:30 p.m.
At 10:58 p.m. — after Mr. Armstrong had descended to the surface but before Colonel Aldrin had — the presses were halted so the front page could be “postscripted.”
“Man Walks on Moon,” the next edition said.
By the time the Late City Edition was on press at 12:46 a.m., Colonel Aldrin had joined Mr. Armstrong.
“Men Walk on Moon,” the final and most famous edition said.
Three photographs appeared on Page 1 in the final edition, stacked vertically at the center. Two carried the unusual credit line, “The New York Times From CBS News.” In other words, we took them off the TV. (There were six sets in the building at the time, Mr. Morris recalled in his memoir, “My Century.”)
Mr. Morris finally had a chance to see real photographs of the moon landing on July 29 at Mission Control in Houston. Nine rolls of stills and 13 reels of movie film had returned to earth with the astronauts, he said.
The Times’s corporate jet had been equipped with a light box and a movie-viewing device known as a Moviola so that Mr. Morris; Henry R. Lieberman, the editor in charge of science news; and George Cowan, the managing art director, could examine the duplicate film that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had provided to The Times.
On their way from Houston to Teterboro Airport — with an ulcer-inducing, three-hour delay because of bad weather — they sketched out a 16-page rotogravure supplement.
“We put together a special issue of The Times Magazine in the Times jet airplane,” Mr. Morris said in the 2006 interview. It was a lot of fun, he allowed.
Even though the section did not appear until Aug. 3, it was The Times’s first effort at publishing color photographs of a spot news story.
And Mr. Morris finally had the chance to fly.
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