Clifford De Bear, longtime Newsday photographer, dies at 92
De Bear, here in an undated photo, took one of Newsday's most iconic photos when he was a teenager. Credit: Newsday
Clifford De Bear, a Newsday photographer for nearly five decades who captured images of presidents, movie stars and ordinary New Yorkers, often from unusual angles and heights, died of kidney disease at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip on Dec. 31. He was 92.
De Bear, of Lindenhurst, began at Newsday in the late 1940s, when, as a teenager, he took one of the paper's most iconic photos. But his newspaper career was interrupted in the early '50s, when he spent two years in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War as a photographer on the USS Palau aircraft carrier.
"He was a kind man and a wonderful husband," said Doris Cynthia De Bear, 90, his wife of 40 years. "As a wife, anything that I ever wanted; he never said no to me."
He was born in Brooklyn, the youngest of two sons to Beatrice and Israel De Bear, and his family moved to Massapequa when he was young.
De Bear graduated from Baldwin High School and took a job with Newsday in 1947 at age 18, first as a stock clerk in the circulation department and later as a photographer.
During his time at Newsday, he photographed Presidents Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan, along with Marilyn Monroe and New Yorkers of all stripes, friends said. But he was best known for his "high-angle" shots from above, whether from helicopters, airplanes, water tanks or bridges.
He spent time with steelworkers above the streets of Manhattan during the construction of the World Trade Center and was the first photographer to climb the 690-foot tower of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge during its construction in 1962.
And De Bear is responsible for one of Newsday's best known images — an aerial shot of Levittown, the country's first suburb.
"Cliff loved aerial photography and took one of the most iconic pictures in the Newsday archive," said John Keating, Newsday's director of multimedia newsgathering. "His image showing new Levittown homes in 1947 became symbolic of the migration of young families to the suburbs after World War ll."
In 1963, De Bear won the Sigma Delta Chi National Photo Journalism Award for an aerial view of Fire Island following a March storm. His images also were honored by The Associated Press and the Press Photographers Association of Long Island.
After learning to scuba dive in the 1970s, he also became proficient in underwater photography.
He was a fixture at Newsday until his retirement in 1995. He later became a freelance photographer for community newspapers in Massapequa, Amityville and Babylon.
De Bear also had wide-ranging interests, said Nicholas Gabriele of Smithtown, a friend since 1976 and a former Newsday circulation department staffer: He was a helicopter pilot, learned origami, was a talented locksmith and a passionate gun rights enthusiast who was involved in a successful effort in the early 1990s to reinstate concealed carry laws in Suffolk County.
Gabriele, who later became an attorney representing De Bear in civil matters, said he will miss his friend's biting sense of humor.
"He was always telling really funny jokes," he said. "A lot of them off color. He had a great sense of humor."
De Bear had six adult children — five from his first marriage, one of whom died years earlier; and a son from his second marriage. An older brother, Jason De Bear, died in 1998.
Services will be held privately.
Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.
