Larry Dion, Times Photographer, Covered The City And Its People

In his heyday from the end of World War II to the early 1980s, Larry Dion knew everybody in official Seattle, and everybody knew Larry Dion, the tall, congenial Seattle Times photographer with the huge grin and ready camera.

"We were expected to know everybody!" Mr. Dion recalled once, in his booming voice. "You knew the sheriff. You knew the chief of police. You knew the fire chief. Hell, you knew the coroner!"

Indeed, some of them played cards with Mr. Dion, an inveterate poker player, and when they had parties, there he'd be, singing and playing the piano.

So it was unlike this voluble, outgoing man, who spent his professional life dispensing the news, to keep news from friends and family.

But when he was diagnosed in March with an early form of leukemia, that's what he initially did, so as not to concern them. Forgoing intensive therapies, Mr. Dion died of the disease Saturday at Providence Hospital. He was 76.

"Larry's great contribution to all who knew him was his enthusiasm," recalled former Times managing editor Henry MacLeod. "Whether he was covering a news story or fishing for salmon or chasing a golf ball or playing poker with old friends, he brought sunshine to everyone. We will miss him and won't soon forget him."

The son of a typesetter who worked for The Times and other Seattle newspapers, Mr. Dion began his Times career in 1938. But as he told the story to columnist John Hinterberger some years back, he

really wanted to start work in 1937. In fact, he showed up every Monday for a year just hoping there'd be a job.

When finally there was one, as a copy boy, Mr. Dion used it to decide what he really wanted to do. As Hinterberger wrote, the young Larry Dion "sat daily at the copy boys' station, watching the hubbub and tumult of the city room charge past his chair. And then this one old guy, Hack Miller, would come in carrying a single little film holder. He walked so slow, dragging himself in, as if it was all he could do to barely carry that one piece of film into the building."

Mr. Dion reminiscing to Hinterberger: "I looked at him and said: `Boy! That's for me! I'm gonna be a photographer. It's the closest thing to doing nothing there is - and they pay you for it!' "

When World War II broke out, Mr. Dion was still a photographer, but far from doing nothing, he flew numerous missions throughout the Pacific, taking aerial photos as a Navy photographer's mate, 1st class.

Once, over Guam, his plane participated in a 45-minute dogfight with a dozen or more Japanese Zeros. Despite the tension, he never forgot to take his pictures.

After the war, back at The Times, Mr. Dion became the paper's premier aerial photographer, taking off in a seaplane from Lake Union any time the news warranted it, recalled longtime Times photographer Bruce McKim.

"In his era, he was the best aerial photographer on the West Coast," McKim said. "And he was meticulous; it showed in his photography."

Indeed, meticulousness was one of his hallmarks. A man who, in the words of his friend and former Times news editor Ryo Inouye, made his bed "two minutes after he got up and had his dishes done as soon as he finished dinner," Mr. Dion was renowned for keeping to his daily schedule, especially his lunch hour, which he considered sacrosanct.

Maintaining this schedule when there was news to be covered "was pure chaos," McKim said, recalling the time a city editor had the gall to assign Mr. Dion to shoot a society picture at noon.

"He said `no way; that's my lunch hour,' " McKim recalled. After a 10-minute set-to, Mr. Dion won.

He also won awards for his sports photography and covered such notable Seattle events as the 1962 World's Fair, the 1965 earthquake and a 1970 bombing at the University of Washington by Vietnam War protesters.

Once, he even got in on the action himself. Photographing forestry students thinning trees near Stevens Pass in 1977, he had the misfortune to have a felled tree fall squarely on his head.

"You guys don't know about undercutting yet?" he muttered to them.

In his private life, Mr. Dion was well known for fishing (he tied his own flies), playing cards (he had nicknames for them all), playing golf, and telling a good (if sometimes tall) story.

"He was probably the world's greatest storyteller . . . a character right out of `Guys and Dolls,' " said Don Hannula, a Times editorial writer. And keeping the kind of company he did probably gave him ample material. On the wall in the "poker room" of his Queen Anne condominium, Mr. Dion had framed photos he took of actors Gloria Swanson, Henry Fonda and June Lockhart, President Harry Truman and Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia.

Mr. Dion's stories probably contained "a shred of truth," Hannula conceded, "but they got embellished and seemed to get better every time he told them."

If he had a soft spot, it was for his family, especially his many nieces and nephews, recalled his sister, Lorraine Crist. She remembers him as "a very generous, kind, loving person."

And one who apparently appreciated history. After he retired in 1981, he donated his old box camera to the Museum of History & Industry.

Besides Lorraine Crist, Mr. Dion is survived by another sister, Gloria Murphy, and two brothers, Bernard and Richard. All live in the Seattle area. Mr. Dion was married briefly in the 1960s; he had no children.

A funeral Mass will be said at 10 a.m. Friday at Sacred Heart Church, 205 Second Ave. N. Burial will be at Calvary Catholic Cemetery. Remembrances may be sent to Pacific Northwest Research Foundation, 720 Broadway, Seattle.