Rolf Kay

What do the following people have in common: Robert Redford, Leonard Bernstein, Mikhail Gorbachev, Colin Powell, Al Gore, Lech Walesa, Danny Kaye, Sid Caesar, Doc Severinsen, Pete Fountain, Mike Leavitt, Norm Bangerter, Scott Matheson, Rocky Anderson, DeeDee Corradini, Ted Wilson, Jon Huntsman, Jim Sorensen, Leontyne Price, Luciano Pavarotti, Glade Peterson, Shamir Perez, Chase Peterson, Bernie Machen, Dionne Warwick, Nancy Workman, Earl Holding, Robert Goulet, Joey Silverstein, Ray Charles, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Dinah Shore, Mel Torme, Victor Borge, Elizabeth Dole, Ansel Adams, Elizabeth Smart, Alan Greenspan, Dorothy Hamill, Bob Bennett, Orrin Hatch, Roberta Peters, Olene Walker, Maurice Abravanel, Karl Malone, John Stockton, Larry Miller, Steve Young, Lavell Edwards, Ron McBride, Gordon Hinckley, Ezra Taft Benson, Dallin Oaks, Earl Wunderli, Florien Wineriter, Rabbi Benny Zipell, Yo Yo Ma, Jay Leno, Carol Channing, and Heather Dorrell? They have all been photographed by Rolf Kay.

Not only photographed but "there were always stories to tell after I photographed these people," Rolf says. He rarely asks his subjects for autographs; the photos are enough. He did want an autograph of Gorbachev, however, but "didn't have any paper with me for him to write on. All I had was a twenty-dollar bill, which I gave to his wife so she could hand it to Gorbachev to sign." Then he realized he had no pen, but Raisa "got the message and started reaching in some men's coat pockets until she found a pen and then handed them both to her husband. He pointed to the signature of the Treasurer of the United States and said something to his interpreter." The interpreter turned to Rolf and said, "Mr. Gorbachev said that this bill has already been autographed." They all smiled and Rolf got the autograph.

Such stories are vintage Rolf. He tells another one of photographing Walesa shortly after Yeltsin had fainted in public and fallen down. "Every time I photographed Walesa with a woman, he would look at her and raise himself on tip toes if she was taller than he." One time he forgot to look at a much taller woman, so Rolf "got his attention and stood on my tip toes to give him the message. Someone bumped me from the back and I lost my balance. Walesa laughed, pointed at me and shouted, 'YELTSIN.'"

Rolf and Victor Borge together were bound to create a classic. "Before I photographed him I had dinner with him at his hotel," Rolf relates. "I asked him where he was living now and he said, 'Upstairs.' After I photographed him I told him to come back soon and he replied, 'I haven't left yet.'"

Rolf's interest in photography goes back to his high school days in New York, where he had his own photo-finishing lab. It remains his passion even though he wasn't able to make it his life's work until he retired from American Optical in 1983.

He was born in Badsachsa in the middle of Germany, a town that he hasn't seen since he moved with his family to New York City in 1929 at age seven. His father and older brother preceded his mother and five other children (Rolf was the fourth child) to New York, where they lived for over ten years before moving to Utah in 1940.

He was the first in his family to graduate from high school and he worked as a messenger for American Optical before enlisting in the army in 1942. He was the only one in Officers Candidate School who hadn't gone to college, and of the eighty in the class, one-half of them washed out. After OCS, he went to India, where as a first lieutenant he served as executive officer in heavy automotive maintenance that maintained both the Ledo and Burma roads. He was honorably discharged in 1945.

After the army, American Optical called him back and he worked first as a lens grinder, then successively as a sales representative, branch manager, and finally major market manager. When the company closed all its branches, Rolf had had 42 years of service and returned to his first love, photography.

He was divorced from his first wife. His second wife died of cancer at age fifty, and Jane Ball has been his significant other for thirteen years. He has three children, all in Salt Lake Valley, and eight grandchildren and five great grandchildren, scattered all over. He has been a director of Humanists of Utah virtually since its founding in 1991. He is also on the board of The Gandhi Alliance for Peace.

If you've talked to Rolf, and you probably have, you've also been told a joke. He loves humor, which he combines with his wisdom acquired over eighty years. He calls himself a god-fearing agnostic and passes along this adage for everyone to live by: "Remember that no matter how thin you slice baloney, you can always break a window with a brick."

--Earl Wunderli