Tony Zappone
| Tony Zappone | |
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| Born |
Anthony Nicholas Zappone October 9, 1947 Tampa, Florida, U.S. |
| Occupation | Author; newspaper, radio and television news correspondent; real estate consultant |
Tony Zappone (born Anthony N. Zappone on October 9, 1947, in Tampa, Florida), became at age 16 the youngest credentialed journalist to lend press coverage to a major national political convention. He was also the youngest contributor of evidence (his photographs) during the Warren Commission hearings into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He began his career in journalism at age 14 as a freelance photographer with The Tampa Tribune, paid at the rate of three dollars per published news photo.
He photographed President John F. Kennedy during a presidential visit to Tampa just four days before Kennedy's November 22, 1963 assassination in Dallas, Texas. Nine months later, he presented the slain President's brother, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, with pictures he had taken that day which were accepted for public display at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston. The presentation took place at Kennedy's U.S. Justice Department office in Washington. (Almost 40 years later, the building was renamed the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building.)
At that time, the Kennedy presidential library was still in the planning stages so the attorney general said he would ensure the photographs would be held with other exhibits and materials until it was constructed.
Several of the photos Zappone took that day showing the last time Secret Service agents were posted at the rear of the presidential limousine were entered as exhibits during The Warren Commission's investigation into the Kennedy Assassination and are still used today in Secret Service training. According to Secret Service records, Kennedy's Tampa visit was also remarkable in that he was exposed to the public for the second longest period of time of any appearance during his entire Presidency, the longest being his visit to West Berlin, Germany on June 26, 1963.
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