More than forty years ago, in the months before we set up The Missourinet, when we were still in local radio in Jefferson City, a new guy showed up to cover city council meetings. He was working for a then-new FM station that hadn’t shown much in terms of news coverage but he’d been hired as the news director and he arrived determined to carve a place in this market for a new news voice.

I was impressed with this kid right away. And I was impressed with him right up to the day he died, Sunday, a third day after gall bladder removal surgery.

I liked Bob Watson’s ambition and his work ethic right away. He wanted to be part of the Missourinet when we started it and I kept putting him off through several cycles of new reporters on our staff because I didn’t want to tell him he just didn’t have the kind of voice we wanted to have on the air. I respected his commitment to reporting, his desire to be a good reporter, the persistence he brought to his work. On top of that, he was a good guy. But finally, I forced myself to break the news to him. I was sorry I had to disappoint him.

Bob left the radio station and worked for the local television station where his conscientious behind-the-scenes role shaped the content of the newscasts. Fortunately, Betty Weldon, the owner of the News-Tribune, saw in Bob Watson the kind of reporter she wanted on her newspaper staff. She hired him more than thirty years ago; Bob said it was the best thing that ever happened to him. That is where he carved his place. In years to come, when people look at the microfilms of the newspaper for the last thirty years they will find the byline of Bob Watson everywhere in the News-Tribune. I used to joke that there were times when he wrote the entire front page. While he might not have really done that, he came darned close a lot of times. His passion for reporting is reflected in the volume and the quality of solid reporting on those pages.

Mrs. Weldon died several years ago and the family sold the newspaper to an Arkansas-based company that, unlike many businesses that are buying the media today, maintains a high standard of local news coverage. A few months ago it named Bob its employee of the year.

He was the statehouse reporter for the newspaper and was a tenacious questioner of governors and lawmakers—-there were times when some of his colleagues had to force themselves to interrupt him to get OUR questions in. He, as all good reporters, hated vagueness and contradictions from the newsmakers. He never backed down in questioning their statements or their intentions. I knew when I read a Bob Watson story that it was accurate, balanced, and thoroughly-developed.

We sat at the Senate press table for many years, both of us at times going into what I call “screen saver mode,” Bob because he dealt with a sleep disorder and me because my work day had passed the eight-hour mark by 1 p.m. most of the time. Both of us always had our recorders running so we didn’t miss anything.

Bob’s coat pockets always bulged with pens of multiple colors. He had a color-coded system of note-taking of some kind that I never asked him to explain. His notes were always neat, his handwriting always clear—while most of us at the table filled notebooks with scrawls that only we could read.

One of his last stories was published on the anniversary of the first moon landing. It was about the reunion of the Apollo 11 astronauts with their space capsule that happened to be at the state capitol on July 20, 1970. Bob knew that I had broadcast the event and he tracked me down at a family gathering in Colorado for an interview. He wasn’t feeling well and had taken a rare day off from work the day before and still wasn’t back up to snuff but he had to get the story, had to find the person he wanted to interview, wanted to tell the tale.

That’s a good reporter for you. As long as you can drag yourself to the keyboard, there’s reporting to be done, a story to be told.

One thing Bob did that I never have done—-a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/reporterbob

You’ll find a lot of his own words and informal photos that capture the spirit we’ll remember, his joy of being a journalist, his love of his family (official and unofficial families), a bit of his self-deprecating humor, and a face that says kindness, steadfastness, and  “character” in both senses of the word.

We have lost invaluable institutional memory. We have lost a good friend, a man who committed his life to good journalism, a newsroom mentor. His church has lost a willing worker, a good soul. His children have lost a proud parent, his grandchildren a proud grandfather. All of us have richer lives because God gave us Bob.

When I dropped in at his room at St. Mary’s hospital Saturday, the day after his surgery and shortly after the nurses had gotten him up for his a post-surgery shuffle to the end of the hall and back, I asked him, “Watson, what’s a good Presbyterian boy like you doing in a place like this?” He took it in all good humor. We talked for a few minutes but just before I left I said, “You know, people are going to start asking, ‘How can you have the gall to ask that question?’ after this.”

“You don’t have to have a gall bladder to have gall,” he answered with a weak smile.

That was Bob Watson.

(The photo is from the News Tribune “contact” page)