News photographer, who specialized in war zones, dies at age 74 from cancer

Pat Hamilton, a photojournalist who specialized in conflict zones, from Central America to Somalia to the Persian Gulf region, and who may have helped alter a presidential election with a whimsical picture of Gerald Ford eating a tamale incorrectly, died Aug. 13 at his home in San Antonio. He was 74.

The cause was lung cancer, said his wife, Sylvia Hamilton.

Mr. Hamilton began his photojournalism career in the early 1970s after three years of combat as a Marine Corps veteran in Vietnam, where he endured withering enemy fire at close range and once saw a platoon-mate hauled off in the jungle by a tiger.

Throughout his photojournalism career, Mr. Hamilton also covered natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes and major sporting and political events. He was on the staff of the San Antonio Express-News in 1976 when, during that election year, he captured President Ford campaigning near the Alamo and biting into a tamale with the corn husk still on.

The culinary faux pas, sometimes called “the Great Tamale Incident,” was regarded as a factor in Ford’s losing Texas to the Democratic nominee, Jimmy Carter.

Mr. Hamilton joined the Associated Press in Mexico City in 1979 and moved to Reuters in the same city in 1985 as chief photographer for Mexico and Central America — a region aflame in civil war and Cold War proxy battles.

In Nicaragua, he traveled to combat zones either with the Sandinistas led by Daniel Ortega and sometimes with the U.S.-backed right-wing guerrillas known as the contras.

One of his closest friends, American photographer Bill Gentile, wrote in his 2021 book “Wait for Me: True Stories of War, Love and Rock & Roll”: “When I drove around in a war zone in northern Nicaragua with a guy like Hamilton sitting shotgun, I had a sense of security that I did not enjoy if riding around with some everyday John Doe.”

Patrick Ward Hamilton was born in Madison, Wis., on July 17, 1949. His father was a real estate agent, and his mother was a onetime legal secretary at Time-Life who raised six children.

Growing up in Gladewater, Tex., Mr. Hamilton lettered in basketball and golf in high school. He attended community college in San Antonio, edited the school newspaper and worked part time for a door manufacturing company before enlisting with the Marines two days before his 19th birthday.

He made at least 30 parachute jumps into combat zones, once landing in the sea and swimming a distance to shore in full gear while surrounded by sea snakes.

Survivors include his wife of 44 years, the former Sylvia Browne; three children; three sisters; and three granddaughters.