The Shocking Kiss of Life Photo- Jacksonville Florida
On a hot summer afternoon back in July of 1967, just a few blocks off Route 1, Jacksonville Times- Union photographer Rocco Morabito was returning from covering another assignment when he glanced up at the sky.
There against a brilliant blue backdrop, a number of Jacksonville Electric Authority (JEA) lineman worked on electricity poles as Morabito studied them, thinking about how to frame a possible photo.
A cry rose from the crowd. A worker on one of the poles had slumped backward, held in place by his safety harness.
Randall Champion hung upside down and unconscious above the horrified crowd. He had accidentally contacted one of the power lines and absorbed 4,000 volts, electrifying himself and stopping his heart.
Alarmed, Morabito radioed the newsroom and told them to send an ambulance. Then he started snapping pictures, as a crowd watched in horror.
The lineman on the poles struggled to get to Champion, when from 400 feet away came a lineman named JD Thompson.
Thompson was Champion’s friend. They had met four years earlier when they both started at JEA on the same day. When he saw his friend in trouble he sprang into action.
“Champion got a hold of the hot wire with his four fingers,” Thompson later recalled “and the electric current came out his –I think it was his left foot, and it blew a hole where it came out of his foot.”
Thompson scrambled up the pole and Champion didn’t look too good. Thompson said his face had turned “grayish-blue.” To save his friend Thompson relied on his training.
On the ground, Morabito began snapping a series of photos of the stomach wrenching scene, as Thompson struggled to save his unconscious friend’s life, by giving him mouth to mouth resuscitation.
Finally, Champion “started gasping and seemed to come back.
Champion went to the hospital with burns, while Morabito raced back to the newspaper, knowing he had a special photograph.
Back at the newsroom, the Journal’s copy editor suggested the inspired caption “The Kiss of Life.”
After the Associated Press picked up the photo, the image raced through newspapers across the country.
Ten months later to the excitement of the entire Jacksonville Journal staff– Rocco Morbit o and “The Kiss of Life” photo won the Pulitzer Prize.
It was a an incredible act of heroism, a life-or-death moment, all captured by Mirabito in a split second.
Lineman Randall Champion recovered from his injuries and he and J.D. Thompson worked for JEA for another 30 years. They stayed friends and even became close with Morabito.
Long ago after that fateful day, Morbito’s “The Kiss of Life” photo continues to stun. It has that imminent-danger element to it that draws young and old, and it also has that great altruistic factor: a human helping another human, saving a life in a real dicey position.
Paula Garland FL Jacksonville Sep 20, 2025 Back in Time Heroes Visual Arts
Sep 20, 2025
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