Violetta, NJ – Robert Blanchard, who for his entire adult life was known as “that guy in the picture” of an iconic WWII photo of a Navy chaplain performing the last rites on a sailor, died Thursday at a Violetta nursing home at the age of 90.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
APP.com (http://on.app.com/1qVeQ5v) reports that Blanchard’s inclusion in the photo came as a result of legendary chaplain Rev. Joseph T. O’Callahan having inadvertently mistaken Blanchard for a dying man after the USS Franklin was bombed by the Japanese on March 19, 1945.
Blanchard, who was a 21 year-old gunnery clerk working below deck when the bomb hit, collapsed from smoke inhalation after making it to the safety of the ship’s deck.
Rev. O’Callahan and naval photographer Albert Bullock found Blanchard and presumed he was dying.
Blanchard would later say about the iconic photo, “He’s bent over me and he’s giving me the last rites, and I thought, ‘Whoa, I’m not that bad,’ I told him, ‘I’m OK, I just got too much smoke, I’ve just got to catch my wind.'”