One of Lancaster's most prominent local and national photographers has died. Frank S. Errigo, 97, passed away January 8, 2018 at Heart of Lancaster Hospital, Lititz, PA after a brief bout with the flu and pneumonia. Born March 27, 1920 in Curwensville, PA. He was the son of the late Joseph Errigo and the late Maria Creonte Errigo. He was the husband of Anna M. Errigo with whom he celebrated 72 years of marriage.

He attended Franklin and Marshall College and then enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1940 at age 19. He served in the European Theatre as a World War II combat photographer who followed Patton across Sicily. participated in the Landing at Anzio, the Battle of Monte Cassino and the Liberation of Rome.

Frank Errigo's career as a photo-journalist and commercial set photographer spans six decades from 1941 to 2000. He is one of the two most respected and prolific color photographers of the Second World War. Born to immigrant Italians in the mining town of Curwensville, PA, Errigo was the youngest boy in a family of nine children. He was thunderstruck as an adolescent by images of the 1899 Johnstown Flood. From the age of thirteen he dedicated himself to photo-journalism, working two jobs through the midst of the Great Depression. In 1936, he purchased a used 35mm Leica camera, along with developing supplies and a book that taught him the basics of his craft. By age 18, he was a precise, highly skilled amateur with a remarkable eye for light and composition.

Just past his twentieth birthday, Errigo presented himself at an Army recruitment center in Harrisburg, PA and told them of his desire to shoot photographs. He was enrolled with 22 professional photographers in the Photo School at the Army War College in Washington in September 1940. There he was introduced to medium and large format cameras, as well as to a young photographer named Ardean Miller III, who had worked for Kodak before the war.

Errigo competed hard with his more experienced best friend, and when both men graduated in 1941, Errigo was at the top of the class with high honors and the rank of Technical Sergeant. He was assigned to the Army Pictorial Services, and by the time he was 21, he was shooting self-directed publicity assignments for the Pentagon.

From 1941 to 1945, Errigo had the assignment of traversing the country with the finest equipment available, shooting promotional color of young GIs preparing for war and then in combat. He was as thorough as he could be, routinely shooting every setup four times, in color with 4 x 5 Graflex, in color with his 8 x 10 Deardorff, and in color with his trusty 35mm Leica, and finally, once for good measure in black and white. He had intimate access to personnel at the Pentagon, and at military bases across the U.S. He even spent time studying 16mm cinematography in Hollywood under the tutelage of Colonel Darryl F. Zanuck, living in a Sunset Boulevard hotel and being chauffeured to the Hal Roach Motion Picture Studios daily. It was during this three-year period that Errigo, shooting Kodachrome at ASA 8, distinguished himself as a master of light and art direction. His painstaking setups transformed the mundane activities of olive drab GIs into remarkable poster-like emblems of American manhood which today stand as some of the most vivid images of the 1940's ever made. More than 600 of his Kodachrome transparencies survive in excellent condition.

Errigo and Miller were separated late in in 1943, when each was assigned to lead a color photographic team to Europe. Miller went with Eisenhower to England, France and Germany, while Errigo sailed for Casablanca, then on to Algiers, Caserta, Sicily and eventually to Rome. He earned four battle stars assigned to the headquarters of the hard-charging Allied 5th Army. Amazingly, he carried his Deardorff and tripod through the surf under fire at Anzio. Both men routinely send back gripping images of the European Theater that blanketed newspapers nationwide, and appeared in the National Geographic, Collier's, Liberty, Victory and the Saturday Evening Post, to name a few. His photographs of this period (many of which are in the National Archives) include many of the major names and military figures of the 1940s including Patton, Marshall, Bradley, Dietrich, DeGaulle and Mark Clark.

Following the Liberation of Rome in June 1944, Errigo achieved what was until then considered impossibility: a private photographic audience with Pope Pius XII. The 24-year-old American setup his Deardorff and took the world's first color photographs of a Pontiff. The Japanese surrender saved Errigo from reassignment to the Pacific, and he returned to the Pentagon, becoming the staff photographer for President Harry Truman. From 1945 to 1952 he photographed three presidential inaugurations.

In 1952 Errigo joined the Philadelphia Inquirer with the mandate of teaching color process to the staff there. He produced essays for he Sunday Roto section featuring Emmett Kelly and the Ringling Brothers clowns, Roy Rogers and Trigger, Joe DeMaggio's Yankees versus Connie Mack's Athletics and Rin Tin Tin, among other subjects. In order to better photograph ice hockey, he acquired a strobe light from MIT, with which he successfully "froze" a speeding puck in mid-air, a first in those days. While there he became the youngest recipient of the Annenberg Award for Photo-journalism.

For thirty years at Armstrong Industries, Errigo pioneered new breakthroughs in the field of room set photography, such as rear projection. He continued to consult in this field for a group of younger professionals he mentored.

In 1994, Frank Errigo was asked by President Bill Clinton to accompany him to Anzio to photograph the ceremonies marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Liberation of Rome and the landing at Anzio hosted jointly by the US and he government of Italy. He did attend and completed the emotional assignment seeing the graves of members of his crew who did not survive. Frank S. Errigo's images have been used in Goodyear advertisements and have appeared in numerous worldwide publications including: Business Screen – special issue of the National Magazine of Audio and Visual Aids, Liberty Magazine, Armes Militaria Magazine (France), Philadelphia Inquirer (Picture Parade), Electronics, Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, National Geographic Society, American Rifleman,,Infantry Journal, Chicago Tribune Daily, Chicago Sunday Tribune, Collier's, Popular Science, America in World War II – The Magazine of the People, Holiday Magazine, Saint Louis Globe, True Magazine, Air News, New York Herald Tribune, Coronet, Des Moines Sunday Register, EnGuardia (South America), Victory (South America), New York Sunday Mirror, The Standard and many more.

He was the winner of the 1948 Annenberg Award for photo-journalism, a member of the Press Photographers Association and a rating as one of the top indoor architectural photographers in the nation. He was a member of St John Neumann Parish and a 4th Degree Knight of Columbus as well as a charter member of the Italian Cultural Society of Lancaster.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by a sister Emma Guarino, wife of Fred, Curwensville, PA; daughter, Paula M., Lancaster; a son, Frank S. Jr. (Chip), husband of Judy, Lancaster; granddaughters, Francesca D. Vaughn, wife of Ryan, Lancaster; Katie Roering, wife of Eric, Mount Joy; great-granddaughters Ava and Emerson Vaughn, Lancaster. He is preceded in death by brothers Robert, Tony, Pat, Joseph, Edward, Harry, and a sister, Katie.

Viewing with the family present will be from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM, Monday, January 15, 2018 at Charles F. Snyder Funeral Home, 3110 Lititz Pike, Lititz, PA, 17543, with Parish Rosary at 7:00 PM. Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated 10:00 AM, Tuesday, January 16, 2018 at St. John Neumann Catholic Church, 601 E. Delp Road, Lancaster, PA 17601.