NSP Correspondent / The Oregon Shot / Gerry Lewin

(NSP Meditations features regular contributions from Correspondents. If you are interested in becoming one, contact Matt Love through the NSP web site for more details.)

Editor’s Note: NSP Meditations is proud to present, the Oregon Shot, a unique photography/essay feature by Gerry Lewin, the renowned Salem photojournalist. Lewin took news photographs around Oregon from the mid-1960s to well into the early 1990s that later became iconic images, particularly his ones of Governor Tom McCall. Lewin currently has a gallery show running at the Willamette Heritage Center in Salem.

On this day, the Blazer parade stretching though city blocks climaxed with a beer-infused euphoria just outside of Portland’s City Hall. While the celebrants shouted their Rip City slogans upon their heroes, I jumped up to a wall behind those main-celebrants, and naturally I was the only photographer around to get this historic shot of Portland’s Mayor Neil Goldschmidt, attired with the Grouch Marx glasses and nose, trying to keep Portland Center Bill Walton from pouring more bottles of beer over him.

Not many will remember how this particular day ended, however at least the camera was not intoxicated and is able to convey into our time the basic idea of what went on in downtown Portland on this day, June 7th 1977.