PHILIP KUNHARDT

Philip Bradish Kunhardt Jr. was born in New York City, NY on Feb. 5, 1928 and grew up in Morristown, New Jersey. He earned an undergraduate degree in humanities from Princeton in 1950 and afterward joined Life magazine as a reporter. In that same year Kunhardt married his wife Katharine Trowbridge; they had six children. After Life ceased publication in 1972, Kunhardt, by then an assistant managing editor, worked on other Time Inc. magazines, including People. In 1978, when Life was revived as a monthly, Mr. Kunhardt was named managing editor. He retired in 1982. He was part of Kunhardt Productions, a family-run filmmaking enterprise based in Chappaqua with his sons Peter and Philip B. III whose films include P. T. Barnum, a three-hour biography shown on the Discovery Channel in 1995; The American President, a 10-hour series shown on PBS in 2000; and Freedom, an eight-hour series broadcast on PBS stations in 2003. Kunhardt wrote more than a dozen books. Several, written with his sons, are companion volumes to the films. He also wrote two memoirs of his parents, My Father's House (1970) and The Dreaming Game (2004), about his mother, Dorothy M. Kunhardt, the children's author known for the classic picture book Pat the Bunny, published in 1940. He also wrote books with his mother including Twenty Days (1965), about Lincoln's assassination, and Mathew Brady and His World (1977). He also edited Life: The First 50 Years, which was a New York Times bestseller. Kunhardt died on March 21, 2006.

"The ingredients for a moving human essay are triumph over adversity, courage in the face of catastrophe, and overcoming great odds."