Chicago's Midway Airport: The First seventy-five Years
by Christopher Lynch

Lake Claremont Press
Phone: 773/583-7800
www.lakeclaremont.com

Mike Rotunno: Photographer to the Stars

Mike Rotunno, the legendary photographer who worked at Chicago's Midway Airport in in it's heyday.
Photo courtesy of the Rotunno family

There is no greater photographic record of Midway Airport's position as an aviation crossroads than the photos of Mike Rotunno. Rotunno ran a business called Metro News, snapped pictures of movie stars, presidents and any other notables who passed through Midway.

In the era before non-stop transcontinental flights, Midway was the airline hub, and so any celebrity traveling coast to coast would have to spend some time in Chicago. Whether it was Senator John F. Kennedy and wife Jackie arriving at Midnight, or Eleanor Roosevelt departing at 10 AM, Rotunno would be there on the tarmac, camera in hand.

After fifty years of practicing his craft, Rotunno finally retired in the 1980's, a Dean of Chicago photographers, and died in 1994, leaving behind many friends and admirers, and an astonishing photographic collection.

Mike Rotunno, in retirement.
Photo courtesy of the Rotunno family

Rotunno was a mentor to many photographers, who later went on to their own fame. One of them is Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Jack Dykinga, who reminisces about working for Rotunno at Midway in the following interview.