Well, That Could Be a Problem

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One of my first assignments at The Times was covering Antonio Aguilar’s Rodeo Show at the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx. Aguilar was a singing Mexican cowboy â€" the Mexican Roy Rogers â€" and someone whose movies I saw as a hild at the old Freeman Theater on Southern Boulevard. When I met up with the photographer for the article, I don’t know what impressed me more: that he actually knew who Aguilar was or that he lived in the Bronx.

The photographer Lee Romero. You know him as Librado, but more about that shortly.

Lee â€" a Californian by birth and a New Yorker by love â€" struck me, a nervous Newsweek refugee, as very un-Timesean. Needless to say, we hit it off.

He, too, grew up with the old Aguilar movies, in Calexico, Calif., where his father, a railroad worker, had moved the family from Los Angeles. We were both excited to meet the great Mexican charro, who ushered us into a trailer on the edge of the cavernous armory. Inside, he regaled us with stories â€" as he prepared several humongous syringes he would use on his horses.

I was dumbstruck. Lee did not take that picture. Our discretion notwi! thstanding, we got a nice story out of it, and thus a friendship began.

He had first joined the Times staff in the late 1960s, teaming with Mike Kaufman to explore corners of the city in very un-Timesean manners. Once, they rafted down the Bronx River. Another time they chronicled the carefree life of a 10-year-old in the city. They turned it into a book.

Kaufman remained a close friend to his dying day. In a 2009 video in which Lee talked about his photography and painting, Kaufman lauded Lee, saying, “of all the people I met in the world, Lee Romero is clearly the most creative.” Trust me, Kaufman met a lot of people.

David Gonzalez/The New York Times Librado Romero, in his Yonkers studio in 2009. Behind him is a painting featuring California’s Mount Signal, a landmark of his boyhood years in Calexico that he has featured in many of his paintings.

Eager to work on bigger things â€" and not content to have his farthest travel limited to Staten Island â€" Lee left the paper. It is rumored that bosses told him they were grooming him for photo editor. His reply: “Who cares”

He had some adventures working for news magazines. He opened a gallery. He closed a gallery. He worked on a couple of daily papers in California. He returned to New York, fell in love with Mary Hardiman and eventually worked his way back to The Times.

Writing captions.

I met him around then, when he was freelancing on the weekends. I liked that he loved music and that his real passion was painting. In time, I spent hours in his Yonkers studio, where guitars lay against the assorted artist’s jumble of canvases, crushed paint tubes and who-knows-what. He became chief photographer at the paper â€" a title he declined to use. He spent a lot of time writing a biographical song about Calexico. Once he asked me to edit it, but I demurred â€" at 82-odd verses, I felt overwhelmed. I do remember that he used to eat two-cent tacos as a child.

Sometime in the early years of our friendship, he changed his byline back to Librado, in honor of his father and his heritage. So, the artist formerly known as Lee went back to being Librado Petronilo Romero III.

To spend any time with Lee was to hear a lot of jokes. Some good. Some bad. Some unprintable. He was relentless, often suckering you in with a deadpan stare. One of those jokes became a running all-purpose punchline.

Yars ago he met the Mambo King himself, Tito Puente. He told the famed percussionist that he, too, played the drums. That’s interesting, said the maestro.

“But I don’t have any rhythm,” Lee said.

“Well,” Puente replied. “That could be a problem.”

Ever since that day, I have tossed out that line as Tito’s all-purpose wisdom for the ages.

Thursday was Lee’s last day at the paper. He has taken a buyout. He will paint, play music, drive a fast car and tell bad jokes. He will enjoy his son Conor’s new role playing Michael J. Fox’s son in an NBC sitcom. He will travel with Mary, a picture editor at the Times who took a buyout in 2011. He will still live in the Bronx, and he will still be my friend.

But a New York Times without Li! brado Pet! ronilo Romero III  Well, that could be a problem.

Librado Romero/The New York Times An IRT subway car in New York, May 8, 1973.

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