A Novel Relationship
We had a local band that played every
night at the YMCA. The last night before we all went
off to the war, right in the middle of "One O'Clock
Jump," the whole bridge fell off the bass he was playing.
We left it in the corner there, kind of as a tribute.
It may still be there. I hope so.That's best-selling novelist Bill Diehl talking about his hometown friend, Bob Wallace. From Clearfield, Pa., both would go on to survive World War II and move to Atlanta. There, Wallace would become the longtime editor of the alumni magazine and many other publications. Diehl would shoot pictures for him for a decade, in the meandering path that would ultimately lead to fame and fortune through several best-selling thrillers.
Wallace has been dead for 28 years; Diehl still refers to him as "my best friend."
The time working for Tech, from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, "was very valuable, very rewarding," Diehl says. "We never had an argument. Never had a fight. I still look back on that time with great fondness."
Wallace returned to Atlanta after the war to complete his industrial management degree at Georgia Tech. He stayed, working on Tech publications until his death.
Meanwhile, Diehl was working as a reporter for his hometown paper, The Clearfield Progress, in a town he describes as "so far up in the mountains you had to bail out of a plane to get out." Wallace called, with news that his father-in-law had found a job for Diehl at The Atlanta Constitution. The father-in-law had worked there years before, had read some of Diehl's work, had liked it. Diehl headed south.
But somehow, the Atlanta newspaper missed the memo. There was no job.
"I stood in the lobby, waiting for editor Ralph McGill to come out. When Mr. McGill came out, I told him what had happened. He asked if I had been in the war. I said yes, as a ball turret gunner in a B-24. He said that if I could survive that, I could certainly do a reporter's job," Diehl recalls. "I went to work that night."
Diehl wrote obituaries, then moved to the police beat. Always, writing was his first love, but when the Constitution and rival Atlanta Journal merged in 1950, confusion and layoffs in the reorganized photo department led to his second career: photography.
To make sure there were always pictures to go with his stories, he decided to take them himself.
"I bought a cheap little camera and started taking pictures. A few years later, Bob hired me and that really launched a photographic career," Diehl says.
"I was among the early photographers to use a 35-millimeter camera. Most of the others were using Liecas or 4x5s. What we were doing was kind of experimental.
"I shot every [Geogia Tech] football game for 11 years, then assignments for the alumni publications. We did some really experimental stuff that worked very well."
Some of Diehl's football pictures were printed in Sports Illustrated, rushed after the game to a Delta airplane that would deliver them to New York overnight.
Diehl remembers sitting backward in a moving roller coaster to take a picture of Tech football coach Bobby Dodd enjoying Disneyland while in Los Angeles to play Southern California. He also remembers taking pictures of silicone in the nose of rockets.
Diehl was billed in several Tech publications of the time as "chief photographer." Still, the work was just part-time.
In 1956, Diehl left the Constitution, turning almost exclusively to freelance photography in the next years.
Much of his work was for Georgia Tech; other assignments, including a portrait of Coca-Cola Company Chairman Robert Woodruff that appeared on the cover of Business Week magazine, came through contacts and friends from Tech.
"I also wrote speeches for Ivan Allen before he became mayor. I met John Portman," Diehl says. "I knew a lot of people because I took photos for them; I got to meet a lot of shakers and movers in the early days of Atlanta.
"Atlanta was a wonderful town then, with just half a million people. It was easy to get around, to meet people."
In 1960, Diehl became managing editor of Atlanta magazine. Soon, he and Wallace were freelancing for each other.
"I hired Bob to write articles for us. We also bought houses about a block apart. I became godfather for his oldest child," Diehl recalls.
They also shared a sharp sense of humor.
"Both of us have a caustic, barb-wire humor that comes from being in the service," he explains. "We were very sarcastic and would fire back at each other. Our relationship was built a lot on that."
Then, suddenly, Wallace died of a heart attack. He was 48.
"He had a bad heart, but no one realized it was as bad as it was," Diehl says. There seems to be an underlying regret of signs missed, history unremembered: "His father had died of the same thing, sitting in the doctor's office, waiting for an appointment."
The loss may have given impetus to Diehl's big career leap, on his 50th birthday.
"My wife threw a birthday party for me, and one of the gifts was an ice-cream typewriter from Baskin-Robbins. It was so neat that nobody would eat it," he says. "After the party, I went back to get a piece, but the typewriter was just a molten pile of ice cream. I thought, 'That's my career.'"
The next morning, he sold all his cameras. Soon, he began the nine-month effort of birthing "Sharky's Machine," a dark look at the world of an Atlanta vice cop.
"I haven't lifted a camera since."
Karen Hill is an Atlanta freelance writer.
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