Charles Paul Pharris Sr.

A Funeral Service will be held 2:00 p.m. Thursday at Mayes Ward-Dobbins Funeral Home in Marietta. Interment will be at Kennesaw Memorial Park Cemetery in Marietta, GA.

Chuck Pharris was a cameraman with ABC News for 37 years. He made the switch from film to tape in 1978, and he worked in the Southwest Bureau of Cap Cities/ABC Inc. outside of Dallas until he retired.

Chuck Pharris began in 1952 as an aerial photographer in the U.S. Air Force, where he was trained by Hollywood professionals to work in 16 and 35mm film. He first shot for “Air Force Digest,” a newsreel, seen in military theaters around the world.

After four years with the Air Force, he joined KPRC-TV in Houston in 1956 as chief cameraman. He was later named Director of Newsfilm Operations, and became a member of NPPA. Chuck and the KPRC staff won several NPPA and AP awards for spot news and features, and in 1962 KPRC was named “Newsfilm Station of the Year.”

Chuck joined the Atlanta Bureau of ABC News in 1964 at the height of the civil rights movement. He covered Selma and Montgomery, church bombings and the Ku Klux Klan, the shooting of James Meredith, and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. During those “long hot summers,” he covered riots in Newark, Detroit, Chicago, Memphis, Miami, and other cities.

Chuck covered the space program from the early days of Gemini to the Challenger disaster of 1986. He traveled on the bus as many presidential campaigns and covered all the conventions since 1964. Along the way, he worked with many young correspondents, who have made it to the top—Tom Jarriel, Steve Bell, Britt Hume, Peter Jennings, Barbara Walters, and others.

In 1977, he was chosen to open a new Southwest Bureau for ABC in the Dallas/Fort Worth area with correspondent-bureau chief, Charles Murphy. He was the only ABC staff cameraman between Atlanta, Chicago, and Los Angeles, traveling over 180 days a year, mostly in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoman, but assignments occasionally took him to other parts of the United States, Central America and Mexico.

Of his many accomplishments there was none of any greater value than his family. He was a loving husband, a devoted father, and grandfather.

Survivors include his wife, Jacqueline Pharris of Marietta; two daughters, Kimberly Renee Fuller and her husband, David of Lilburn, Jolie Atherton and her husband, John of Marietta; two sons, Daniel Deutsch Bonner and his wife, Cindy of Cartersville, Charles Paul Pharris Jr. and his wife, Kimberly of San Antonio, TX; nine grandchildren; Christopher Fuller, Ashley, Charles and Mark Atherton, Lindsey and Curtis Bonner, Conner, Carson and Carlee Pharris.

Burial arrangements under the direction of Kennesaw Memorial Park.