Obituary: Former Daily Pilot photographer O’Donnell kept focus trained on life in O.C.
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Patrick O’Donnell had a knack for being in the right place at the right time — a talent that served the photographer and former Daily Pilot staffer well throughout six decades of capturing scenes from a burgeoning Orange County.
Working his vast professional networks with aplomb, the seasoned lensman notably photographed a string of American presidents, from Lyndon B. Johnson to Joe Biden, and snapped pics of Margaret Thatcher, Groucho Marx and Buzz Aldrin during visits to local groundbreakings, fundraisers and speaking events.
Highlights from that extraordinary career were fastidiously documented by the Fountain Valley photographer and Peggy O’Donnell, his longtime business partner and wife of 57 years, in the 2024 book, “What Do 11 U.S. Presidents, the Dalai Lama and Whoopi Have in Common?”
Peggy O’Donnell recalled how, even after retiring from the biz, her intrepid husband was still avidly shooting photos during a visit to see his son’s family in Northern California last November.
“It was raining on a Friday night. We went to a football game, and he’s out taking photos of his son, who’s a high school teacher and runs the photo department,” she recalled. “That whole weekend Pat was shooting photos. He couldn’t stop himself.”
Those prized shots would be among his last. After receiving a cancer diagnosis in December, Patrick O’Donnell died peacefully in his Fountain Valley home on March 27. He was 83.
“He had no pain, he just slipped away quietly,” his wife said Wednesday.
Born on May 22, 1941 in Nebraska, Patrick O’Donnell moved with his parents to Whittier when he was 8 years old. He attended public school and was a sophomore at Whittier High School when he landed in the class of a photography teacher who would inspire a lifelong career.
“I caught the photo bug in that first semester of my sophomore year from Ernie Hemmerling, a master teacher who taught photography there for many years,” O’Donnell recalled in his memoir.
Two years later, he won a state-level Kodak High School Sweepstakes Award for a black and white photo showing the family dog, Sandy, peering through the slightly open front gate of his home. He titled it, “Left Behind.”
At 17, O’Donnell had saved up enough money to purchase a 4x5 Speed Graphic press camera and built his own darkroom. By the time he began taking classes at Cerritos College, he was shooting sports games and working on the weekly student paper, Talon Marks, O’Donnell reflects in his memoir.
He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Cal State Long Beach, before serving as a sergeant in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, based at Riverside’s March Air Force Base from 1965 to 1971. While on active duty, he worked for the base’s newspaper and chronicled missions to Southeast Asia, Europe and Alaska.
Hired at the Orange Coast Daily Pilot in 1968, O’Donnell spent the next 15 years working on call, awaiting breaking news from Seal Beach to San Clemente and capturing images of John Wayne and Richard Nixon in their Orange County residences.
After the Times Mirror Co. sold The Pilot to another publication, O’Donnell took a full-time faculty position at Cal State Fullerton, later becoming a photographer for the university. In that capacity, he documented two trips the Titans took to the White House after winning the College World Series championship, snapping pics of then-presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
Concurrent with occasional stints at the East Whittier Review and Whittier Daily News, the photographer launched a freelance photography business with Peggy and taught photo journalism classes at Orange Coast and Rio Hondo colleges and Cal State Dominguez Hills.
Together, the husband-and-wife duo shot the Orange County Fair from 1988 to 2009, keeping pace with technological advances in photography over the decades, even converting a home darkroom back to a bedroom when digital cameras became king.
His numerous connections to area colleges and organizations gave O’Donnell many high-profile photo opportunities, though he was hardly a paparazzo, his wife says.
His work drew praise from the Associated Press, California Press Photographers Assn. and Orange County Press Club, the last of which honored him with a Sky Dunlap Award for outstanding lifetime achievement and community service.
“He was always in the right place at the right time,” Peggy said, describing her husband’s can-do attitude. “You’d meet someone involved with one thing, and they’d suddenly say, ‘Can you do this?’ and you never say no. If you’re in business for yourself, you always say, ‘Of course I can do that — it doesn’t matter what it is.”
O’Donnell is survived by his wife, Peggy, and sons Ryan and Steven (a third son, Kevin, died in 2000), daughters-in-law Andrea and Maggie and grandchildren Alex, Rachel, Mikey and Shane. A private memorial service for friends and family is planned for May 3.
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