Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 3, 1992                   TAG: 9203030338
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PHOTO CHIEF FOR PAPERS DIES AT 76 THE `COLONEL' SET UP DEPARTMENT

A Roanoke native, Hammersley earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Roanoke College. But he once said, "I'd be stark raving mad if I had gone into that."

Instead, he followed photography, for which he had won a national collegiate award. He joined The Roanoke Times two days after he graduated from college in 1938.

He took photos and wrote for the newspaper until 1942, when he entered the Army Air Corps. He served 38 months in England, Africa and Italy, and finished his World War II duty as chief photo officer of the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces. He flew more than 40 combat missions. His shots from that time include a grisly picture of Mussolini, printed in a number of World War II anthologies. Hammersley eventually was promoted to colonel.

After the war, he returned to the Times for three years, then took two years to work as director of publicity for the Barter Theatre in Abingdon. He came back in 1950 to form the newspapers' photography department, which he managed until he retired in 1980.

Hammersley was awarded permanent possession of The Associated Press Trophy for taking the best picture of the year in the state three times in the 1950s. In 1966, the Virginia News Photographers Association gave him the Miley Award, its highest honor, for outstanding contributions to press photography in the state. He donated his news photographs to Roanoke College.

When he retired, then-president and publisher Barton Morris said, "The Roanoke Times & World-News will not be as good a newspaper without Howard Hammersley. His influence will remain, however, in the fine photo department he has built and in the colleagues he has trained."

Hammersley, known as "Ham" or the "Colonel" to his friends, could be abrasive. But the same man was named Father of the Year for family life in 1980 and was called a "big, gruff marshmallow" by his wife.

Hammersley was secretary of the National Press Photographers Association and in 1956 got that organization's Fellowship Award for his service. He was a charter member and past president and treasurer of the Virginia Press Photographers Association.

Hammersley worked with Boy Scouts for 24 years and designed a lab and photo workshops for Boy Scout camps. He taught classes at several Western Virginia colleges, and in 1978 was inducted into the Roanoke College Athletic Hall of Fame for his development of sports photography.

He is survived by his wife, Anne Hammersley; six children, Elizabeth Barber, Salem; Karen Hammersley, Norfolk; Lisa Reynolds, Richmond; Robert Hammersley, Wrightsville Beach, N.C.; Charles Hammersley, Moscow, Idaho; and James Hammersley, Deltona, Fla.; six grandchildren; and a sister, Rachel Cassell, Pulaski.

Arrangements are being handled by Oakey's Roanoke Chapel. The family requested that in lieu of flowers, memorials be sent to the Center in the Square Endowment Fund or to the Roanoke College Valley Scholarship Fund.