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Note: armed service. ********** Chet ran the Nicollet Radio Service shop at 136 E. Lake Streetuntil about 1941. He took a photo of a car accident near hisshop and took it to the Minneapolis newspaper. At some pointthey offered him a job as a photographer. He ended up working asa photographer with the Associated Press (AP). He playedthe violin. ********* "PHOTOG HAD DRIVE- Work No Problem For Chet, But Quitting Wasby George Moses, Twin Cities Director of The Associated Press Chet Magnuson was one of those photographers who could go out totake pictures of a group of visiting Russians and come home withone of their medals. And he did. The medal could well have been for the six-scoop ice creamsundae he commandeered for a Muscovite to give Chet one of thenewspictures for which he was famous. He never explained it. Nor did the Associated Press photographer ever explain the driveand energy that marked his work-a drive that stopped suddenlyThursday when his heart gave out in his 49th year. Getting Chet to work was not a problem. Getting him to quit was.Missing a night's sleep, or two, when a good story was runningdidn't bother Chet. Not sticking with the story would have. For a Minneapolis - based photographer, the long and leanMagnuson ranged far afield. The product of his ranging hit thenation's front pages via AP Wirephoto tima and time again. He covered floods from Missouri to Manitoba. He covered troopmaneuvers in Texas. Trailing a missing airplaine, Chet once camedown in the Yukon territory, near the Arctic circle. He oncetook off from Minneapolis in a manhunt that took him throughboth Dakotas, Nebraska and into Kansas -- and was in on thecapture of the killers after a 2000-mile chase. A grin ever ready on his open Scandinavian face, Chet was thesort of person that things happen to. Covering a flood in Winnipeg, Chet stepped on a plank he thoughtwas part of a bridge. It wasn't part of anything, and all sixfeet of photographer disappeared into the flood. He bought a short wave radio to check on fires. The radio caughton fire. At a prison riot in Sioux Falls, Magnuson too time out to eat apiece of pie--by the prison walls. Rioters broke a window justabove him, dusting his partly-eaten pie with glass. On a fast-moving manhunt, Chet's favorite lodging was a cell inthe local jail. That was he was close to developments. At the Stillwater prison riots in 1953 Chet couldn't talk hisway into the cellblock, but did bed down on a cot in an outeroffice. There he'd answer an occasional phone call at night - atleast one from a competing newsman who didn't know he wastalking to the AP. An honorary Minneapolis fire chief, Chet was close to firemanand fires. Good pictures resulted. En route to one fire, Chetpicked up a policeman hurrying to the blaze on foot. Pulling upat the scene, Chet slammed on his brakes in mid-street, grabbedhis camera and ran. To the policeman he yelled, "Park it!" Once on assignment at the Twin Cities airport, Chet and somecolleagues were curious about a bewildered woman standingnearby. Wrote columnist Gareth Hiebert in the St. Paul Dispatch:"'I'll find out.' said Chet, who is one of the moststraight-forward, dauntles men in the business. The ladyanswered him in Norwegian. His face lit up and he spoke to herin Norwegian. And then her face lit up.... When he left, hepatted her arm. And a smile of confidence suddenly creased herface. Then Chet turned and walked away so quickly he didn't seethe tears in her eyes. But I did. I was standing nearby and sawit all happen." When the picture business was slack, Chet liked to join wifeMary in the kitchen cooking Swedish delicacies. Along with hispicture prizes, Chet cherished a yellow ribbon award as fifthprize to a batch of Swedish crullers at the Minnesota StateFair. Colleagues never got him to admit that 1, they were Mary'scookies, or 2, that there were only five entrants in
Note: Chet had rheumtic fever which gave him an enlarged heart andkept him out of the
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