'Start of a new day'

Gordon Converse joined the Monitor in 1947 and traveled the world taking pictures for this newspaper. He retired in 1985.

"There's not a country I haven't worked in," he said recently of his career with the Monitor. But some of his most memorable images were taken much closer to home. This is one of them.

He and his young family were leaving their home in a Boston suburb one September morning in 1959, about to drive to Vermont.

Mr. Converse noticed that the sun was just starting to break through the early fog. He turned to his five-year-old daughter, Debbie, and said: "Run down the street!" What for? she wanted to know. "You're asking too many questions - run down the street!" he said.

She did. Converse had time for just one exposure. An instant later, the fog - and the mood - were gone.

This is his most-requested image, Converse says. It has appeared on book covers, in full-page ads, on calendars, and in magazines.

"It's symbolic," Converse's wife, Shirley, says of the photo. "It shows us running to the light."