Ben Dwyer enjoys the annual Groundhog Day assignment at Wildlife Prairie Park in his role as photographer for WMBD-TV. For clarity sake, Ben is in the middle. (PHOTO BY DAVID ZALAZNIK)

BY DAVID ZALAZNIK

Ben Dwyer died May 26, 2021 of ALS. I don’t remember exactly when Ben and I met. He was a photographer at WMBD-TV for almost 40 years here in Peoria and I started in late November 1989 as a photographer at the Peoria Journal Star. I am most sure that our paths crossed before the calendar flipped to 1990. And that crossing started a friendship that lasted to this day.

While Ben’s career focused on video journalism, he had an intense interest in still photography and loved photojournalism. But in his still photography he liked to mix it up a bit as well. I recall vividly the photo he sent one year, I don’t remember if it was a Christmas card, he sent many of those, but it was an artfully composed photo of a decomposed bird carcass that had emerged from his chimney or something. That was Ben, he kept you guessing.

Through the decades, Ben always liked to talk and think about photographers he admired. Somewhere I still have a note from Ben with a five-page, two-sided hand-written examination of the work of Sebastiao Salgado.

Being a friend, or even an acquaintance, of Ben meant you also ate well. Ben was a prolific gardener. As vegetable harvest season advanced, I would weekly receive a call from the Journal Star front desk announcing a man was at the desk with bags of vegetables.

Over the past thirty-some years we worked I admired Ben’s journalism. He always worked hard to put a package together for the news of which he could be proud and the viewer could appreciate. When I moved to an early morning shift, it was an annual ritual that Ben and I would meet in the pre-dawn darkness at Wildlife Prairie Park for the Groundhog Day observance. I would grumble about it and Ben would chide me with “C’mon Dave, it’s Gertie! Lighten up.”

Ben was a skilled videographer with an eye for creating feature packages of his own that dealt with topics he loved, from cooking and gardening to art, nature and the seasons. Peoria Park District’s Mike Miller said, “I saw his obituary today. Such a devastating disease. He was always on the beat covering local news. Peoria was a better place to live because of his dedication. Sad day for journalism.”