Remembering the boss, John Robertson

CEDAR RAPIDS - John Robertson was the last of a generation - the hard-charging yet mild-mannered, get the story first (and right), chain smoking, hat wearing, morning coffee and late afternoon beer drinking editors. If you watched late ‘70s TV, think Lou Grant on his own show.

John died Saturday. He was 86.

Before John became my friend, he was my boss. Actually, my boss's boss. But he hired me. And he hired a lot of people who would become my friends.

I met John on a Tuesday afternoon in January, 1979, after being led upstairs to the second floor of The Gazette building and through the newsroom filled with reporters, editors and clacking typewriters to a quiet office in the far corner. The bespectacled man with a neatly trimmed salt and pepper beard wearing a three-piece suit rose from his chair behind a large wooden desk to shake my nervous hand. Phyllis Fleming (city editor at the time) followed me into the office and closed the door.

In that room, wearing suit and tie and seated on a low sofa, I sweated bullets as Phyllis (we lost her Feb. 18, 2011) grilled me for 45 minutes with some of the toughest questions any 25-year-old applicant should face. When she finished, she turned to John and said, "Do you have any questions for him?" John replied, "No. I'm ready to offer him the job." Whew. I breathed a sigh of relief.

The newsroom has been arranged many times since. The walls of John's office have been removed. I now sit in the corner where he sat with the same windows to my back and face the same newsroom. I regularly feel John's presence.

When John sat here, his door was almost always open. People would come and go all day as he extinguished newsroom fires. When he had time to himself, he'd light a cigarette (Camel, non-filter), stroke his beard and lean back in his chair. He might have appeared to be daydreaming, but he was thinking. You knew he had his eye on you.

Until 1981, The Gazette was an evening newspaper. It went to press early in the afternoon, planning began for the next day's paper and any time after 4 p.m. (especially on Fridays) we'd walk to the Fox and Hounds for a few beers. While this was a social hour, that day's stories and work always entered the conversation.

Occasionally, John got on his soapbox. Inevitably, while dissecting a story, he'd narrow his eyes and say something like, "You can't write your way out of a paper bag." He might add, "Nobody is irreplaceable."

This was John's old-school way of inspiring you to work harder the next day, to always do your best, because somebody was watching, especially readers. And then, when something funny was said, John's eyes would crinkle and he'd laugh from deep in his belly.

Through the years we bowled on The Gazette team, he helped me celebrate birthdays and I went to Christmas parties at his house. In 2001, I wished him and his wife, Betty, a happy 50th anniversary. She died last March, which is why I believe John died of a broken heart. They were always together, best friends for 60 years.

You see, through John's authoritarian exterior, you'd find a softy inside. He loved to talk about his three children and would reminisce nostalgically, especially about putting on his driving hat and cruising with Betty to Wyoming in his little red MG Midget with the top down all the way.

To put it concisely, as a newspaper man, as a family man and as a friend, John was genuine.