Roy Pinney

Roy Schiffer Pinney (August 13, 1911 – August 9, 2010) was a professional photographer, herpetologist, writer, journalist, war correspondent and pilot.

Pinney was the former president of the New York Herpetological Society and the author of The Snake Book. He was also an ardent spelunker and the author of Cave Exploration. Roy Pinney worked for the New York Daily News (Brooklyn Section, editor Jack Hoins) for 18 years working as photographer and writer, a familiar figure around New York City arriving on assignments on his 1928 . He later freelanced for Life, Look, Colliers, and Woman's Day and other magazines often going on his assignments in his World War II BT-13 plane. He was a founder and trustee of the ASMP. He was the photographer on more than seventy scientific trips. He was the producer of the American TV series "Secrets of Nature" (1955–59) and the cameraman and director of the Wild Cargo series in 1961. He was the oldest surviving of the 500 war correspondents to cover the D-Day invasion of Normandy before his death in 2010. He lived in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, the city of his birth.

Pinney was born Pinyehrae Schiffer to Polish immigrant father Max Schiffer and mother Sarah Schiffer on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1911. His parents emigrated from Galicia in eastern Europe in the border region between Poland and Ukraine. At the age of 18 he Americanized his conspicuously Polish/Jewish name by altering his first name Pinyehrae into the last name Pinney and adopting the first name Roy in honor of Roy Chapman Andrews.

The son of grocers, Pinney was born and raised on the Lower East Side. Pinney caught his first venomous snake, a rattler, at age 12 while attending Boy Scout camp. He was chastised, but it did not take. He attended high school at DeWitt Clinton High School, an all-boys public school at that time on 10th Avenue and 59th Street in New York City with classmates and lifelong friends Bernard Herrmann and Abraham Polonsky.

...
Wikipedia