A Miami photographer called ‘Hemingwayesque’ died on the river he loved

Local Obituaries admin August 5, 2026 0 Comments

A Miami photographer called ‘Hemingwayesque’ died on the river he loved

Former Miami Herald photojournalist David Walters, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his image of earthquake-torn Mexico City in 1985, was a man with a “boisterous” and “bombastic” personality, his friends say. So much so, Walters could make his colleagues laugh so hard in the company cafeteria between assignments as he recounted anecdotes that made mashed potatoes shoot out of his nose.

Walters also was a grandfather with a zest for the great outdoors, particularly boating and fishing, ever since boyhood in his Missouri birthplace. Every Father’s Day, Walters paid tribute to his father by posting a mid-century, meditative family photo of a boy and his pop on a river that seemed straight out of Ernest Hemingway’s 1925 short story “Big Two-Hearted River.”

“Mom took the photo of me and Dad fishing near the Gasconade River in Missouri on my fifth birthday, 1959,” Walters captioned the image every year — as he did this past June 21. “Happy Heavenly Father’s Day to the man who shared everything with me. And, yes, we still fish together, every time I wet a line.”

Walters lost his life at age 72 on that same Gasconade River at Rollins Ferry 67 years later on a dark, rainy Friday night on July 31.

An Osage County police report, citing the Missouri State Highway Patrol, said the Fulton, Missouri man “drowned as he attempted to retrieve a vessel from a boat ramp. He went below the water and did not resurface.” Walters’ son Chris confirmed the report.

“He was the best guy. Family and friends, and everybody, I think, was just really, positively affected by everything that he thrusted upon us,” his son said. He made people laugh, and he came up with jokes that were funny — and some that were dark. Whether you agreed with the way he viewed things or not, he was very passionate about the way he believed in the things that he believed in.”

That mashed potatoes anecdote? That image spun out of a comment Walters recounted to former Herald photo director Roman Lyskowski who had more than 25 years’ experience working alongside his colleague.

“He was hard not to like. We had our moments,” Lyskowski said.

But Walters’ disarming style, that sense of humor, defused workplace tensions.

Hemingwayesque

“He would go out of his way to make people laugh. He was bigger than life,” Lyskowski said. “Big-hearted and a good man. I always thought of him being Hemingwayesque — a lust for life. He did everything with tremendous passion.

“But also, he represented a sometimes arcane concept in this day and age: He was a man’s man,” Lyskowski said. “By that I mean he was very macho, someone whose passions seemed most stirred by traditionally manly pursuits: Hunting, fishing, camping — he was also an avid alpine skier and golfer. Bottom line: David Walters was a fairly complex individual.”

Walters’ background

Walters was born in St. Louis on June 11, 1954. After graduating from the University of Missouri in Columbia with a degree in photojournalism Walters moved to Miami in 1978 and landed a job as a photographer at the Miami Herald inside the landmark One Herald Plaza building. He retired 39 years later and moved back to Missouri in 2017.

At the Herald, he met Tracey Walters, who worked in the finance department. The couple married and had two sons, Christopher and Benjamin.

In 1986, Walters was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in spot news photography for pictures he shot for the Herald in earthquake-torn Mexico City in September 1985.

“He was probably one of the best photographers in the country,” said his friend, former Miami Herald photographer Pete Cross. “But he was very humble. He didn’t tout himself. Even when Facebook came along as a social media platform, he didn’t post all his wonderful photos, which he could have, and some might say he should have. He would fire on all cylinders at a certain level that the rest of us really couldn’t. As my friend Bruce Gilbert would say, ‘When he shot a photo, he paid attention to every inch of the frame.’ It was that intense. David was just extraordinary in that way.”

Walters’ eye for detail impressed the Herald photographers he’d send out on assignment. Like the time he sent award-winning photographer Al Diaz — with the Miami Herald since 1983 — on assignment to shoot the new Miami Marlins baseball park and its then owner Jeffrey Loria in 2012.

Diaz scouted the stadium a day before and took a test shot imagining Loria on the pitcher’s mound and a view of the interior of the stadium. He drove back to the Herald’s office three miles and 15 minutes away. He showed the image to Walters in the fifth-floor photo department.

“He looks at it and says, ‘Where’s the stadium?’ And it was like, ‘OK, I know what to do!’ So I went up to left field, went up in the stands, and I could see the dome from the inside, but you couldn’t see it from the top. And all he had to say is that one comment and it just woke me up. It was that visualization, that collaboration, working together with ideas. He had a great eye for detail. He was always inspiring in that way, just making a comment and just a few words and boom, yeah, it would click.”

What happens when photographers take a ski vacation

Walters’ exacting eye extended into retirement and visits with old Herald colleagues and best buds Peter Cross and Bruce Gilbert.

The three had met in the Herald’s darkroom in the early 1980s. “We all became like the Three Stooges,” Cross said. “We can just goof around and have a lot of fun together.”

For years, the trio spent winters on vacation skiing in Colorado, New York or Vermont.

One winter in Colorado on a ski trip, Cross volunteered to take action photos of all of them, as well as another retired Herald photographer buddy, Charlie Trainor, who joined them on the ski vacation.

Cross plants himself downhill in a spot on the ski slope with his camera.

“I thought, ‘I’ll get down real low, and you ski by me. I’ll get the action. It’ll be really great.’ So Bruce comes by. Get a great shot of Bruce. Charlie goes by. Get a great shot of Charlie. And here comes David. David’s barreling down. He’s really going fast and he skis right over my tips of my skis and peels them back like a banana and knocks me over. After he did, he stopped and turned and said, ‘I hope you got that!’

“David had a wonderful sense of humor.”