A photographer for the U.S. Army, Stoughton was assigned to the Army’s first motion picture unit, where he worked under then-Capt. Ronald Reagan. Later, working at the Pentagon, he received an enviable assignment: he was sent to the White House to photograph John F. Kennedy’s inauguration.
Kennedy liked the idea, and made the assignment permanent — Stoughton became the first official full-time White House photographer. Kennedy “would tolerate two clicks, and after two frames, that was it,” Stoughton remembered later. “It was a nice working arrangement and I didn’t overstay my welcome.”
Yet he was able to take more than 8,000 images of Kennedy and his family in the 34 months that Kennedy was president. Stoughton was with the president’s motorcade in Dallas when Kennedy was shot; his most famous photograph is Lyndon Johnson’s swearing in ceremony aboard Air Force One, while a blood-spattered Jackie Kennedy looked on.
“At a traumatic time, in a single photograph, Cecil provided the essential evidence of the continuity of government,” said Bobbi Baker Burrows, director of photography at Life magazine. He died November 3 from pneumonia. He was 88.