Arthur Rickerby was a staff photographer at LIFE Magazine during the last ten years of his life. A youthful 51 when he died in 1972, he had packed, one friend noted, "five normal lifetimes of experience and accomplishment into his brief half century." Rickerby was with President Kennedy in Dallas. He was aboard the U. S. S. Missouri for the signing of the WWII peace agreement. He lived with Japanese prisoners in a Guam POW camp. He tracked Nikita Khrushchev across the United States. And he covered the trials that finally sent Jimmy Hoffa off to prison, the Boston Strangler's reign of terror, UN growing pains. Etc., etc., etc!

   His illustrious career in sports photography began at Duke University, where he worked his way through college selling pictures of his alma mater's winning teams. Upon graduation, he joined the U.S. Navy where he served in the elite photographic unit headed by then Captain Edward Steichen, one of the gurus of American Photography.

 When the war ended, Rickerby was recruited by Acme Photos (eventually

United Press International) in New York City. He covered a wide range of assignments - Japan and China’s recovery from war, a coffee crisis in Brazil, an Olympics in Berlin – and marked the middle of his career by capturing one of the most famous sports images of all time: Yankee Don Larsen pitching the only perfect game in World Series history.

   In the late 1950’s Rickerby left UPI to become a highly successful free lance photographer. His work appeared in dozens of publications and in 1960 he was invited to join the prestigious staff of LIFE Magazine. He was immediately sent to cover the Kennedy White House. Later he traveled extensively in Asia, doing a story on rice as the world’s most important nutrient. He did the photographs for LIFE World Book on Northern South America and dozens of other essays. He was, however, perhaps best known for his color essays on football, hockey, auto racing and a variety of other sports. His last assignment for LIFE, in May of 1972, was color coverage of Willie Mays after Mays’ switch from the Giants to the Mets. Arthur Rickerby died three months later.