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- Cinematographer
Brown was the NBC-TV cameraman who accompanied Rep. Leo Ryan as the Peninsula congressman led a team to Jonestown to investigate reports that Jones' quasi-religious compound there was holding people captive through coercion and mind control.
As the half-dozen gunmen sent by cult madman Jim Jones bounded off a tractor-trailer, rifles in hand. As they aimed at him. As he took a bullet to the leg. And as he fell to the ground, the wounded leg crumpling under him.
Within seconds he was dead with a final shot to the head. And the film in his camera, shakily showing the attack that ended his life and those of four others, including the first U.S. congressman ever to be killed in the line of duty, became one of the most grimly riveting video clips in history.
As a camera operator from San Francisco to Los Angeles throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Brown river-rafted with President Jimmy Carter, filmed war protests in Berkeley, and covered so many bloody horrors, including the Juan Corona serial murders, that he earned the nickname "Gory Brown,"
In 1970, they both went to Vietnam so Brown could cover the war, and that's when he was shot out of a helicopter. He was filming a battle in Cambodia, and when the chopper took rounds it pitched to one side, and he plunged 40 feet to a field of thick grass and cracked his neck and collarbone, Bob just picked himself up and ran to a landing zone.
Four years later when police got into a shootout in Los Angeles with SLA members who had earlier kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, whose family founded the corporation that owns The Chronicle. As the two sides blasted off hundreds of rounds, Brown found himself on his belly under the fire line - shooting footage, just like in Vietnam.- Don Harris was born on 8 September 1936 in Vidalia, Georgia, USA. He was married to Shirley LaRue Harned. He died on 18 November 1978 in Port Kaituma, Guyana.
- Camera and Electrical Department
Robinson had worked for The Examiner for three years when he got the assignment to travel to Guyana with reporter Tim Reiterman, now a senior assistant metro editor at the Los Angeles Times. Robinson had already taken pictures that won him admiration: getting in the right spot to capture Jimmy Carter carrying his own luggage; a hijacker and his hostages surrounded by FBI agents; victims of a tram accident at Squaw Valley. Among his own favorites were shots of football, baseball and skating.
After an arduous journey and delays in Georgetown, Guyana's capital, the group arrived at the small airstrip in Port Kaituma, then continued by flatbed truck to Jonestown. Robinson made pictures of the smiling faces at a celebratory dinner, of Ryan addressing Jones' followers in front of a sign reading "Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it." He photographed Jones caressing the chin of a little boy he claimed was his son, he snapped kids dancing, a baby sleeping on its mother's shoulder and children in the nursery.
And as he was leaving, he took the last pictures of Ryan alive. The congressman's shirt is flecked with the blood of a man who tried to stab him and was injured as he was being disarmed. Ryan looks exhausted, tense.
The photographs show Robinson's knack for being in the right spot, for catching what is essential. Part of their impact also comes from the sheer nature of photography, its power to capture what the naked eye cannot see alone. There was something horribly wrong at Jonestown, something Robinson would not live to see on his film.
Shortly afterward, Robinson himself was shot dead. A photograph shows him lying on the ground near Ryan, NBC correspondent Don Harris, NBC cameraman Bob Brown and temple defector Patricia Parks, all slaughtered as they waited to board a plane. This time, the picture was taken by Reiterman, himself injured in the attack. Four rolls of Robinson's film were transported home. Another 35 seized by police in Guyana as evidence were later recovered. Some were printed for the first time for the Veterans Building exhibit.- Patricia Parks was born on 29 April 1934 in Springfield, Ohio, USA. She was married to Jerry Parks. She died on 18 November 1978 in Port Kaituma, Guyana.
- Leo Ryan was a Democratic Congressman. He served with the U.S. Navy from 1943-46 as a submariner, and graduated from Nebraska's Creighton University with an A.B. and an M.S. He was a high school history teacher, later serving as a South San Francisco city councilman from 1956 to 1962, then was elected mayor of South San Francisco. Less than a year later, he was elected to the California State Assembly, and in 1972, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for the 11th Congressional District of California.
In 1978, reports regarding the Peoples Temple, led by cult leader Jim Jones, began to filter out stories of abuse and human rights violations. Ryan decided to go to Jonestown, the Peoples Temple's main enclave, to investigate.
In November 1978, Ryan and his staff arrived in Georgetown, Guyana. For three days, Ryan negotiated with Jones' legal counsel and held meetings with embassy and Guyanese officials. Finally, Ryan and several aides boarded a small plane to the Jonestown compound. Initially, the welcome at Jonestown was warm, but after only a few hours Ryan and his entourage began receiving notes and requests to leave. The next morning, Ryan and his aides continued their interviews, and met a woman who secretly expressed her wish to leave Jonestown with her family. The group wishing to leave departed Jonestown and arrived at the airstrip. Peoples Members then ambushed the group and opened fire, killing Congressman Ryan and four others, wounding another nine.
The following day, the Guyanese army, ordered to arrest Jones and disarm Jonestown, cut through the jungle to reach the settlement, and discovered all 900 of its inhabitants dead. Leo Ryan's body was returned to the United States and is now interred in Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California. He was posthumously awarded a Congressional Gold Medal. He is the only member of Congress to have been killed in the line of duty.