The "Dan Marschka: Part II - Lancaster Loses It's Photo Storyteller" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading the "Lancaster Living" section of my Sunday LNP.  The lead headline on page B1 reads: "LIFE IN PICTURES".  Reporter Mike Andrelczyk's story about retiring staff photographer Dan Marschka was both interesting and informative, but there are really no words that can be written to adequately tell what Dan has done for those that read the Lancaster Newspaper in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  

Sunday, May 3 newspaper telling of Dan's retirement.

Dan is the type of fellow who can tell an entire story with one nudge of the shutter release on his 35mm Nikon camera.  He has visually reported the history of Lancaster city and county for over 40 years of his life.  During that time he has been an inspiration to myself and many of my students whom he has spoken to during visits to the high school where I taught photography.  There have been many great photographers who have captured the history of Lancaster and its residents for Lancaster's newspapers in the past, but you can count on one hand those that have told the story as well as Dan.  He's not going to be able to walk the same for a few months without his camera over his shoulder!  In the newspaper article about his retirement, Dan tells about his brother, who was in the Navy in the late 1960s,  returning from overseas with a Minolta Rangefinder camera for his 13 year old brother.  Dan says that was a turning point in his life.  But, it wasn't until he entered 10th grade and learned how to work in the darkroom that everything "exploded for him."  Dan's father was a physicist at RCA in Lancaster and helped develop the imaging systems that mapped the moon.  

"The Soiling of Old Glory" tells the busing crisis in 1976
in Boston.  The photo shows a white teenager assaulting
a black man - civil rights activist Ted Landmark - with
a flagpole bearing our flag, Old Glory.  April 5, 1976.

Great influence for a young boy who had a very creative nature.  So, why did Dan decide on photo- journalism as a profession?  He says he was inspired, as many of us have been, by Stanley Forman who was an award winning photojournalist for the Boston Herald.  Stan's photographs titled "The Soiling of Old Glory" and  "Fire Escape Collapse" were both an influence on Dan's decision to become a photojournalist.  

"Fire on Marlborough Street" was the World Press photo
of the year in 1976.  It shows 19 year old Diana Bryant
and her two-year-old  goddaughter falling from the
collapsed fire escape of a burning apartment building
on Marlborough St. in Boston on July 22, 1975.

To be able to tell an entire story of an event with the touch of your fingertip is both challenging, historic and life changing.  Many readers of the newspaper have counted on Dan to do his job this past 40 years and take them on a journey with him as he told the story of his fellow man through his viewfinder.  It all started he said, when he got a police scanner and listened to the chatter on the scanner.  One day he heard a police report of a domestic situation, so he followed the same route and when he heard the report that "We have him blocked," he jumped out of his car in time to take a photograph as the police were slamming the culprit's face down on the hood of his truck.  He said his blood was pumping.  He notified the newspaper of his photographs and they invited him in to take a look at them.  They processed his roll of film and placed one of his images in the newspaper the following day.  He was hooked!  Dan actually met his wife when she was working as a paste-up artist for the newspaper.  I'm assuming that after that meeting, Dan spent most of his spare time and breaks watching her work on the daily newspaper.  On a visit to his home a few years ago I had the pleasure to meet his wife Valerie as well view photos of their children.  She illustrates the same compassion toward the readers of Lancaster news as Dan does.  A few photos were in the newspaper's story this past Sunday showing some of the big events that Dan has photographed during his career with the paper.  

Dan's dramatic photo for a story on drug addition in 2014.

Such stories as the Three Mile Island incident that was followed all over the world, an Amish school house shooting in 2006 when a mentally deranged fellow shot and killed quite a few elementary-aged children, to the arrival of presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008 at nearby Buchanan Park.  Dan has also traveled the world from Nepal to Kenya; from the Congo to Albania; and many other places in between.  

Recent photo I took which shows my wife looking at the
photographs Dad had taken of me for an article on my blog.

I have been lucky enough to have known Dan for many of those 40 years that he worked at the newspaper.  His yearly visits to my classroom were much antici- pated.  A few months ago he visited with my wife and myself when he arrived to take my photograph for a story in the newspaper about my blog.  Carol and I enjoyed his visit and the professional manner he uses to achieve his final result for the newspaper.  Though he may be retiring from his daily routine, I suspect he will never put down his story-telling Nikon for he just won't look and feel the same without it flung over his shoulder.  So Dan...enjoy the rest of your life!  You certainly have earned an enjoyable retirement for all the many stories you have told the public of Lancaster, Pennsylvania through your viewfinder!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.