One of the best & boldest news photographers ever…
…but John Gaps III of the AP and Des Moines Register had a sad ending.
DES MOINES, Iowa, Nov. 11, 2022 – I’m so sorry life ended the way it did for my ol’ war buddy John Gaps III, who died on Oct. 17 of a heart attack at 63.
Bold and gregarious as they come in his heyday, he wound up nearly a recluse, depressed, destitute, drinking way too much. But with his best photos plastered all over the walls of his apartment, he could at least see what he’d once been – one of the best news photographers ever.
From 1986 until 2001, he was one of the top photographers for the Associated Press, probably their very best in military combat situations around the world. The next 10 years, he was the photo director, an editor and columnist for the Des Moines Register.
His life will be celebrated this Sunday, Nov. 13, with a reception from 3 to 6 p.m. at the Mainframe Studios, a headquarters for working artists in downtown Des Moines. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be directed to John’s memorial fund at johngapsmemorial.com, where you can also see some of his photography.
John Gaps III — great talent, a real artist with a camera, brute strength, bull-headed and “no finesse at all, except maybe with words when he was writing,” his daughter Emilia says.
Gaps learned the trade while growing up through Dowling Catholic High School, Iowa Lakes Community College and Iowa State University. He had a great trainer in his father-in-law the late Larry Neibergall, a senior photographer for the Des Moines Register & Tribune, and he shared lessons with his brothers-in-law Bill Neibergall, a longtime photographer for the Register, and Charlie Neibergall, who is still shooting for the Associated Press.
Gaps became a journalism legend for the AP, which dispatched him repeatedly from his home base in Des Moines to shoot wars and riots in four Central American countries; the Persian Gulf War in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq in 1990 and ’91; in 1992 and ’93 in Somalia, where his photo work made him runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize; and in 1994 and ’95 in Croatia and Bosnia. In those 15 years, he was shot at three times that he knew about, taking a bullet in his right knee in 1994 when he was covering the violence between Israelis and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
He was an absolute blessing to me in 1990 and ’91, when I made two trips to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq, covering the Gulf War for the Des Moines Register. He’d been there for weeks before I arrived in December, and he gave me all kinds of tips about getting ready. Once I got there, he did me a favor and shot photos to go with a couple of my stories. And he used his AP equipment to transmit my own photos directly to the Register.
I was back home by Christmas in ’90, stayed here for January, and was sent back to Saudi when February started and the allies’ invasion of Kuwait loomed. As I was getting ready for that trip, my home phone rang very early one morning. Gaps, calling from Saudi, asked if I’d do him a favor. “Of course,” I said, “what’s up?”
“As you’re heading to the airport,” he said, “would you swing by my house and have Gina (his wife then) give you my favorite combat boots with the extended tops on them? And then stop somewhere, buy a copy of Sports Illustrated’s ‘Swimsuit Edition,’ which has just come out, roll it up and stick it down in one of the boots, and bring them with you.”
Sure, I said, but why the SI swimsuit edition?
“The invasion is going to happen soon,” Gaps explained. “Sharing that magazine with the troops will probably get me a tank ride right into Kuwait City!”
I delivered.
From 1990 until about 1996, I wrote a half-dozen or more columns about Gaps and his assignments – which ranged from deadly and dangerous to glamorous and thrilling. On the more fun end of the spectrum were both Winter and Summer Olympics, football Super Bowls, and in 1995 covering a round-the-world tour by First Lady Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea.
It was unusual, I suppose, for a columnist to spend so much time and space writing about the work of another newsie. But Gaps was so frequently in the center of big time news, and he was always willing to give me an insider’s description of what was really happening. Plus, Iowans were extraordinarily proud to have one of our own doing such good work in such embattled places.
Some excerpts from a few of those columns:
--Nov. 1990: “I’ve always been kind of a film pig,” Gaps, then 31, told me after seven weeks in Saudi during the U.S. military build-up called Desert Shield. “Over here, I’ve been shooting five to six rolls of film a day, seven days a week. Our aim is not to shoot what we call the ‘Be All You Can Be’ shots – you know, that’s the Army’s advertising slogan. TV is going after the action moment, as always, but we want to get those kind of in-between moments to show what it’s really like. No matter how good the TV footage is, it’s the still photo that people remember. It seems to me like almost all the great war pictures are made in the aftermath, so a lot of times, it's up to us still photographers to kind of pick through the rubble to get the picture that gives the whole situation perspective.”
--Jan., 1991: “What a trip it is here now,” Gaps said from Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia. “A bunch of us have been spending nights up on the roof of the Hyatt Regency with our cameras ready, waiting for the (American) Patriot missiles to go off, if the Iraqis send Scud missiles toward Riyadh. At first, we’d all be wearing our helmets, flack jackets and gas masks – just in case. Now we’re just up there in our soft hats, hoping we see a Patriot blow up a Scud. When the Patriots do go up, they give you a new outlook on war. They’re deafening. They shake the buildings and everything else.”
--Jan. 1993: `Globe-trotting news photographer John Gaps III still says he has “the best job in the world” despite being shot at an almost-point-blank range through the car window in last spring’s Los Angeles riots – the bullet fragmented against the glass and ricocheted – and the frightening way his recent 27-day assignment in Somalia ended on Christmas night. “I was all done, coming home the next day, so to kind of pamper myself, I was up on the roof of this compound a bunch of us shared to enjoy a good cigar with some of the guys,” he said. “Just as I started to go back down to bed, I stepped into this lighted stairwell. I heard a ‘pop’ and a bullet went right over my head. We all hit the deck, people started screaming and down below on the streets, all the Marines floodlights went on. But the gunman was long gone. Somebody had just put an exclamation point on the visit for me – kind of like, ‘You’re done – go home now!’ The shot in Los Angeles and this recent one in Somalia were the bookends on another crazy year.”
--Dec. 1995: Gaps has roamed the world for a decade, covering wars, famine, riots and disorders. But he says he’s never seen anything like the destruction and depression that nearly four years of ethnic war between Muslims and Serbs have visited upon Bosnia. “I feel like I must be on Jupiter,” he said in a mid-week call from Sarajevo. “This just can’t be the same planet I have grown up on. It’s unbelievable what’s happened here. Virtually every building that’s still standing has shell holes. Everybody walks around with the heads down like they’re beat up. They never look you in the eye. It’s like Bulgaria without the frills – horrible. This was one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and now it’s all been blown to hell. Everybody here has a story about how someone in their family or a neighbor has been killed. I don’t know if I can take this much longer. It’s not that I’m afraid for myself. It’s just the older I get, the more it hurts me when I see what happens to the kids in an environment like this.”
John Gaps and Gina Neibergall had four young children at home in Des Moines through all that. Now they are John Henry Gaps, 42; Ethan Gaps, 40; Sarah Bonsall, 39, and Emilia Gaps, 31 – all living in the Des Moines area. Their mother Gina Neibergall died of cancer at the age of 48 in 2008. She and John had divorced years earlier.
They all went through a lot.
“John’s time as a war correspondent brought images of war-torn refugees and insurrection to the world,” his obituary says. “Tormented in his final years by the atrocities he witnessed, we hope that his story sheds light on PTSD and the price paid by those who bear witness to war.”
Emilia, now 31, the youngest daughter, made it plain what the price was.
“We lost our father to that,” she told me this week.
In his later years, he tried to explain it himself in poetry, photo essays, videos and more.
Yes, in the end, John Gaps III was probably a victim of his own excesses.
But I knew him, worked with him, watched him in action in some awful places. And on Sunday, I will be honoring the service of a man I will always think of as both a war hero – and a war victim.
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You can write me by commenting below here, or by direct email to me at chuck@offenburger.com.
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Thanks you , Chuck! Very nice tribute. I went to high school with John, it's so sad the way his life ended
I took a few classes taught by John and Robin and bought a wonderful photograph from him. He gave me a 5x7 photo also. He did a story for the Register about non-artists who did art. I was happy to be one of the subjects, and he even included a photo of one of my paintings.
Thanks for your tribute. Rest In Peace.