Storytelling photographer and respected educator
If something was worth doing, Curtis “Curt” Chandler felt it was worth doing well.
Whether it was his nearly three decades as an awardwinning photographer and multimedia journalist at several daily newspapers — including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette — or the 15 years that he served as a devoted educator at Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University, Mr. Chandler left nothing undone.
A constant fixture in the newsrooms, classrooms and workshops where he toiled, Mr. Chandler stayed until there was no question left to answer or guidance to share.
“Curt’s fuel was black coffee and the satisfaction he got from helping the stream of students who waited patiently outside his office or classroom to get some advice or hear a story,” said John Beale, who worked alongside Mr. Chandler as chief photographer at the Post-Gazette and later as an associate teaching professor at Penn State.
“Our summer workshops would start at 9 a.m. and we tried to finish by 10 p.m. But Curt wouldn’t end his day until there was no one left to help, and that was frequently in the small hours of the following day. There were times when I would come into work at the Post -Gazette at 7 to 8 a.m. and Curt would still be there from the day before.”
“He was one of the last ones to leave if there were people who needed help. He would just stay and stay and stay,” said editor and consultant Bill Ostendorf, who met Mr. Chandler when they attended Northwestern University together. “He was like that everywhere he went.”
Mr. Chandler, of Philipsburg, Centre County, died Jan. 31 of pancreatic cancer. He was 64.
Born in West Germany, where his father was stationed at a U.S. Army base, Mr. Chandler grew up in various American cities in Minnesota, California and Idaho.
He became an Eagle Scout and was a camp counselor before a Scout jamboree in Japan changed his life.
“His dad was an avid photographer and I think he picked up the bug from him,” said his wife, Stacie Paulsen Chandler, about her husband’s initial interest in photography.
As a teen, Mr. Chandler bought his first Nikon camera for the jamboree and chronicled the trip with numerous photos.
The couple met in 1977, when both were juniors at Northwestern. They knew each other as classmates, but it was a night out with friends that saw their relationship progress.
“There was some guy hitting on me in the bar and he wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Ms. Paulsen Chandler recalled. “I looked around the room and Curt — he was a big guy — was playing pool and I said, ‘I need your help. We need to pretend we’re a couple so I can get this guy to leave me alone.’ ”
WhenMr. Chandler asked how, she suggested that he could kiss her.
He obliged.
“And that was it!” she said.
The couple married in June 1980.
Mr. Chandler went on to work in newsrooms in Colorado, Utah and Cleveland.
It was in that Ohio job that Post-Gazette photographer and writer Steve Mellon first encountered Mr. Chandler.
“During our days as competitive photographers in the ’80s, I was in awe of Curt. He was producing stunning photographs in the big city of Cleveland for the Plain Dealer. I was working at a small-town paper in Indiana,” Mr. Mellon recalled.
“I’d see his pictures and say, ‘How did he do that?’ Quite often his pictures had a sense of humor — something you don’t always find in newspaper photographs. I remember one picture of city workers painting the word ‘School’ in large letters on a street in a school zone. They’d misspelled the word school. It remains one of the funniest pictures I’ve seen.”
By 1994, Mr. Chandler had joined the Post-Gazette, where he was director of photography and the newspaper’s first editor for online innovation.
During the same period, he taught photography at Duquesne University and traveled the country as a presenter at dozens of workshops aimed at students and working journalists.
The year 2007 brought with it a major career shift for Mr. Chandler, who was lured to Penn State by Mr. Beale.
Mr. Chandler would serve as an associate teaching professor and go on to launch the school’s multimedia program.
“We worked on a lot of projects together and that’s when students really learned,” Mr. Beale recalled. “Curt’s classroom had no walls. He was always teaching. He would drive students around — they would even come to his house. He was completely selfless when it came to offering his time.”
“It’s true — Curt never came home,” his wife said, laughing. “He had two completely different careers. Teaching has always been natural to him. He would get texts in the middle of the night and answer them. If anyone needed help, he was there.”
Students agreed.
“He was a hands-on, leader-by-example kind of educator,” said former student Andy Colwell, now a freelance photojournalist and educator in Denver. “He would show great work that others had done; he would talk about the craft that went into it, both obvious and nuanced, and he would inject his own experience and wisdom gained from his own career. He would help that student figure out what they wanted to do, and by extension, what they wanted to be. He will live on through his lessons.”
“His passion for learning new things was infectious and he had the most patience of any instructor I’ve ever met,” said former student Mandy Hofmockel, now managing editor of audience at Hearst Connecticut Media Group.
“He constantly went above and beyond, even for projects that weren’t for his classes. He opened countless doors and he instilled in me a love for online journalism.”
A lover of travel, music and entertainment, Mr. Chandler had a movie collection that would leave friends “in awe,” his wife said.
“Curt was really weird and eclectic in his tastes,” she said. “He knew really good food, music and movies, but he was perfectly happy to eat, listen or watch because they tickled his fancy.”
Mr. Chandler also edited books about photojournalism, including one written by longtime friend and retired newspaper editor Bob Lynn.
“There’s no way not to like Curt Chandler,” he said. “He was one hell of a journalist and one hell of a teacher. He was so special in so many ways.”
Along with his wife, Mr. Chandler is survived by his children, Toby Chandler Ekmann, of Bethel Park, Molly Chandler Campe, of Bloomfield, N.J., Vincent Chandler of Denver, and Madeline Chandler, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; three grandchildren; a sister, Cindy Chandler Smith, of McGehee, Ark.; and a brother, Christopher Chandler, of Loveland, Colo.
A memorial service will be held Feb. 25 at the Bellisario College of Communications.
Memorial contributions can be made to the Chandler Grant for Storytelling through the Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University or to Family House, 5001 Baum Blvd. #545, Pittsburgh, Pa. 15213.