'George was a character, to say the least'

George Gutierrez had a knack for catching people at their most truest of moments. And more often than not, it involved tears.

The first time, it was a simple assignment at a nursing home in Kingsbridge Heights: Capture some of the sights of a Memorial Day ceremony.

Simple enough, right? Wrong. In a situation where the planets just lined up perfectly, Gutierrez — then a staff photographer with The Riverdale Press — caught one of the Marines in the color guard with a tear streaking down his cheek.

Gutierrez didn’t hesitate. He lifted his camera and snapped the photo, capturing Memorial Day the way only he could.

But don’t think that was just happenstance for Gutierrez, who died last week just a month shy of his 72nd birthday. Nope, a little more than a decade later, Gutierrez was part of the elite photography corps at The New York Times, when the world was still reeling from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

He was sent to Yonkers in the aftermath of the tragedy to cover a funeral for an EMS worker killed at the World Trade Center. The rest of the world was there, too, represented by every news outlet he could imagine.

Once the worker was laid to rest, the reporters and photographers packed up their gear and left. But not Gutierrez. The EMTs had planned to do their own tribute to their fallen colleague that included a salute and music from a boom box, he later told a Times reporter.

“I shot three frames in the rain,” he said, and he was at the end of the film role.

That was when he saw Jay Robbins tear up.

“I’ll never forget how it happened right when the music started playing,” Gutierrez told The Times. He took the picture, and it became part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning package of the aftermath of the attacks.

“For me, it’s been difficult to look at this photograph,” he said. “It still breaks my heart.”

Yet, that’s George Gutierrez — to anyone who knew him. To anyone who loved him. Heck, to anyone who just met him. George Gutierrez was that kind of guy.

“I would always be amazed, because I’d be in the same space with him,” remembers his wife of 20 years, Romina Carrillo Gutierrez. “He’d take a picture out from it, and I would be like, ‘Where the heck did you see that?’”

Romina met George much later in life. She was 48 at the time and never married. George was 52, and had been married and divorced.

“I had called off a wedding in my 20s, and then I went to grad school and just sort of decided I was going to be single and be the crazy aunt to my nieces and nephews while I did my doctorate,” Romi said. “I wasn’t looking. He wasn’t looking.”

But the rest was history.

George had returned to Riverdale by then to take care of his sick mother. He kept himself busy with work, but also had found a passion in painting — something he would showcase any chance he got, whether it was in Yonkers, or even much closer to home at The Riverdale Y.

It was that form of artistic expression that surprised one of George’s good friends — and fellow Riverdale Press alums — David Handschuh.

“George was a character, to say the least,” said Handschuh, who visited George just before he passed away. “He never stopped volunteering, or offering to help. There were people who never do anything. And then there are people who volunteer all the time. And George was always the first to raise his hand and say, ‘How can I help?’”

George Gutierrez was born April 23, 1952, in Manhattan, to Odilia Nadal Gutierrez and Ramon Gutierrez. In addition to painting and photography, George was also an illustrator, an album cover artist, and a collage creator.

He’s a graduate of Cardinal Hayes High School, and also attended Lehman College.

He was published in not only The Times, but also The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Vanity Fair. And he maintained studios in both Yonkers and in his Riverdale home that he shared with Romi, who survives him, as do his two siblings, Ray and Linda.

A funeral Mass for George Gutierrez is set for April 15 at 3 p.m., at The Church of St. Agnes, 143 E. 43rd St., in Manhattan.

“He never let his work opportunities get in the way of offering to help,” Handschuh said. “There was always a smile, always a laugh. Always a twinkle in his eyes.”

Romi knows that, for sure.

“It was amazing the eye that he had,” she said. “Even in those last few days, he kept trying to take photos, but the iPhone was too heavy for him. But I would hold it, and try to position it the way he wanted, and he would then press the red button.

“Sometimes he got it, and sometimes it just ended up being a little accidental video. But it was what he saw, which he always discovered the beauty.

“And that was George.”