In a dramatic flourish, Hallerman strapped on a gas mask that he believes his mother, Edith, had saved from her service with the Red Cross during World War II. (Though gas masks were a common Earth Day accessory, this long-snouted beast looked particularly awful.) The AP photographer posed Hallerman in front of a blossoming magnolia tree, then changed his mind. “Try leaning over and smelling those flowers,” Hallerman recalls the photographer saying. Hallerman bent his six-foot frame over a short fence surrounding the tree so that the mask’s proboscis touched the pink-white blossoms. The photographer snapped his shot, and Hallerman thought nothing more of it.
“An Earth Day Icon, Unmasked.”
Associated Press
A long-anonymous Pace University student on the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970.