Chances are the youngsters at Windover Art Center in Newburgh never knew that Thomas J. Abercrombie had been Newspaper Photographer of the Year or Magazine Photographer of the Year.

But his trips to the Himalayas? To Fiji and the Matterhorn? Those they knew about.

For more than a decade, the retired photographer for National Geographic came to Maine from his home in Shady Side, Md., to “show slides and tell stories,” recalled his daughter, Mari Abercrombie, director of Windover. “The kids looked forward to it. They were enthralled.”

Tom Abercrombie, 75, died Monday in a Maryland hospital of complications after heart surgery.

The photographer and writer never lived in Maine, “but he wanted to,” his daughter said Wednesday.

“He used to sail his boat from the Chesapeake Bay up to Maine.”

In addition to his yearly work with the youngsters at Windover, including last summer, Abercrombie’s work was part of a three-generation exhibit of photographs at Edythe Dyer Library in Hampden in 2003.

Daughter Mari and grandchildren Laura and Isaac Fer also had work on display.

Abercrombie was the first correspondent to reach the South Pole by air and part of the first group to make contact with a Stone Age tribe in Venezuela.

He spent two years with research scientist Jacques Cousteau on The Calypso in the Mediterranean and along the African coast.

The Middle East was one of the topics on his mind during the 2003 program in Hampden.

“From my experience, the belly of America knows little about the Middle East. What they do know they hear from people who write or are on TV and who are ignorant [about the Middle East] or are downright biased,” Abercrombie said at the library.

“Even though we say these are different people and look at them differently, they are our cultural ancestors,” he said. In addition to his daughter and her children, Abercrombie is survived by his wife, Lynn, and son, Bruce.

His philosophy and his sense of adventure are very much a part of how the nonprofit art center in Newburgh has grown over the years in its work with children, Mari Abercrombie said.

The family is encouraging memorial contributions to Windover Art Center, 3001 Kennebec Road, Newburgh.