The images that many of us carry around in our imaginations come, not from witnessing an event, but the images created of those events. My images of Vatican II are very much the line drawings that Franklin McMahon drew of the great events in Rome in the 1960s. His fine drawing of John XXIII once graced a Commonweal cover. The obituary in Thursday's Times also points to other iconic drawings, in this case, of the Emmet Till trial in 1955. McMahon's drawings appeared in many venues, including the Till drawings in Life magazine. He was from Chicago! a modest man, always considering himself a "reporter," rather than an artist. Here.

Margaret O’Brien Steinfels is a former editor of Commonweal. 

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