Episode 50 - CommuniTea Chat with Lee Romero

Librado Romero, born in Los Angeles, in 1942, has been drawing and painting since childhood, exhibiting both photography and paintings in Europe, Mexico and throughout the United States. In 1965, after art school in San Francisco, he enlisted in the U.S Army and while stationed in West Germany, he was assigned as the Regimental Photographer. This marked the beginning of his fifty-year career in photojournalism. Upon returning stateside he was hired as a staff photographer for the Providence Journal. Two years later in 1969, he joined the staff of The New York Times, but resigned four years later to pursue magazine work. He worked for The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Newsweek and Time Magazines and others. In 1976 he was offered an opportunity to work as a consultant to El Sol de Mexico newspaper in Mexico City which he accepted and then decided to try his hand at painting full time and returned to his home-state of California where he opened and operated an art gallery in Venice. After that, he took a summer job with the Los Angeles Times and then settled into a staff position at the San Francisco Examiner where he remained for the next six years. In 1985 he returned to New York and was rehired at The New York Times where he worked until his retirement in 2013. In 2002, he was a awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News as a staff member of The New York Times’ series on “Race In America”. Lee is a Riverdale resident. He is presently spending his retirement painting full time in his Yonkers studio.