Alabama photographer who shot legendary Bear Bryant and Pat Dye looking lodge photograph dies at 81

Longtime Birmingham News photographer Charles Nesbitt, whose most well-known photograph was the often-reprinted snapshot of legendary coaches Paul “Bear” Bryant and Pat Dye sitting collectively in a looking lodge, has died.

Nesbitt died Nov. 23, his spouse, Jane, stated. He was 81.

Nesbitt shot 1000’s of pictures for information and have tales in Alabama, however is finest recognized for a single body of the 2 coaches.

In the photograph, the 2 males are engaged in a personal dialog, simply months after that they had confronted one another as opposing head coaches within the Iron Bowl.

Bryant’s Alabama group gained that 1981 recreation at Legion Field in Birmingham, 28-17, defeating Dye’s first Auburn group.

It was a Saturday afternoon in February 1982, a few months after Bryant’s historic 315^th victory.

Bryant and Dye had been invited to hunt cane-cutter rabbits on Allen Acres alongside the banks of the Black Warrior River, simply exterior Moundville.

Before their afternoon hunt, Bryant and Dye acquired collectively within the camp home for a lunch of rabbit stew, and for a couple of minutes of catching up.

“Once everybody finished up the meal, it was suggested, ‘Let’s all go outside and let Coach Bryant and Coach Dye have some time absolutely alone,’” Nesbitt recalled of how the {photograph} got here to be, in line with a 2016 story by long-time Birmingham News author Bob Carlton.

On his method out of the cabin, Nesbitt inconspicuously shot a single body of the 2 coaches, engaged in a personal dialog.

“So I picked up my camera, and I was one of the last ones to walk out of the room, and I turned around and made one frame,” he stated.

“And somebody asked me one time, one of the other photographers, ‘Why did you only make one image of that?’

“And I said, ‘Well, I didn’t want to intrude.’ I was a guest and not a news photographer. And I just felt like that I owed them that respect, if that’s what you want to call it, not to intrude any more than that.”

It turned one of the vital in style pictures ever taken of Coach Bryant, and essentially the most memorable shot of Nesbitt’s 40-plus-year journalism profession.

“I’ve seen it everywhere,” he stated.

“Filling stations, meat-and-three restaurants, people’s houses. It’s just everywhere.”

The {photograph} didn’t even seem in The Birmingham News till someday properly after that 1982 looking journey, in line with Nesbitt.

Instead, it was one other photograph Nesbitt shot that day — one of many two coaches strolling alongside a dust street, Bryant cradling his shotgun and Dye together with his inventory resting on his shoulder — that ran alongside a column Birmingham News sports activities editor Alf Van Hoose wrote the next week about their rabbit-hunting tour.

“Coach Bryant and Coach Dye were just chatting as they walked down the road,” Nesbitt stated. “And I simply stayed in entrance of ‘em and made pictures as they were walking down the road.

“You know, it made some nice pictures because of the time of the year it was and the trees didn’t have any leaves on ‘em and the road twisted and had ruts in it. So it made a nice picture.”

The other photo of Bryant and Dye was published without fanfare later, and became an instant sensation.

“I think sometime later on there may have been a little small picture published of them sitting at the table,” Nesbitt said.

“And then it just exploded.”

Hundreds of orders for reprints of the almost-forgotten photograph poured into The News’ photograph division.

“My name got to be a nuisance in the photographic department because everybody had to try to print those pictures,” Nesbitt stated.

“It was a hard image to print because there wasn’t a lot of light on it.”

Dye, who died in 2020, had a replica of the image framed at his Crooked Oaks Hunting Preserve in Notasulga,

It appeared like each soccer fan in Alabama had a replica.

“Everybody that sees it wants one,” Dye stated. “Not because of me, but because of Coach Bryant.”

Bryant died Jan. 26, 1983, 4 weeks after teaching his final recreation.

“I think for the Alabama people it was almost symbolic of passing the baton — even though Dye was at Auburn,” Nesbitt stated.

“This was only one year away from before he died…

“I think it was just the combination of that, (and) of the two of them being in a non-football scene and enjoying each other’s company.”

Dye, who had been an assistant coach at Alabama beneath Bryant from 1965-73, defeated Bryant of their second and closing Iron Bowl going through off in opposition to one another. Auburn gained 23-22 on Nov. 27, 1982, at Legion Field.

“I liked Coach Bryant and Coach Bryant liked me,” Dye as soon as recalled. “I really got a lot closer to Coach Bryant as a friend after I left Alabama.”

Bryant bounced again with a win over Illinois within the Liberty Bowl, 21-15, in his closing recreation, on Dec. 29, 1982.

The recreation in opposition to Dye had been Bryant’s closing lack of his teaching profession.

Nesbitt, who retired from The Birmingham News in 2006, took what is perhaps thought of extra traditionally vital pictures in his journalism profession.

His work included a photograph of George Wallace and Jimmy Carter from the 1976 presidential primaries and one other from the 2002 capital homicide trial of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bomber Bobby Frank Cherry.

None had the lasting cultural impression the Bryant and Dye looking lodge photograph.

Nesbitt stalked the sidelines for dozens of Alabama and Auburn soccer video games over greater than 4 a long time.

“He taught me more than most, just watching him work,” stated Joe Songer, a retired photographer for The Birmingham News who labored with Nesbitt from 1986-2006.

“He could brighten up a room. The man could tell a story. It was so fun to be around him in a crowd.”