Former newsman faces new fight

TONY DODERO

For more than 20 years, the residents of Huntington Beach were in

good hands with a newsman by the name of Robert “Bob” Barker, who

kept their city, school and police officials honest.

He was tough but fair, critical but flattering. He loved writing

about the good things people do but never afraid to duke it out with

the best of them if he had to, all in the name of hard work and good

journalism.

And now that same newsman, whom I have had the privilege to call

my friend for nearly 14 years, is in for the fight of his life

battling brain cancer.

“I am not going to let this stuff bother me,” Bob said from his

Garden Grove home last Friday. “I’m learning to take each day at a

time, and if I do that, I’ll be fine. But I am happy, and I have a

happy life, and I have a lot of good friends.”

As I said, I’m honored to be one of those friends. But what I am

most grateful for is that Bob has been a mentor to me. For some

reason, he took under his wing a stupid, young reporter fresh out of

journalism school who thought he knew everything.

He set me straight on that, just like he set me straight on a lot

of things. He taught me how to report and to write and to put a value

on hard work. I owe so much of what I am today to Bob.

I’m only one of many who admire him.

“He’s the greatest,” Huntington Beach City Councilman Dave

Sullivan said. “What can I say? He has integrity. When he was a

reporter, he dug and dug until he got a story. He was fair with

everybody and always gave the other side of the issue an opportunity

to comment. He took seriously his job to let the public know what its

government was doing.”

Ask any City Hall official and they’ll tell you they both loved

him and hated him. He broke countless stories about city hall

boondoggles, such as the time city officials -- in the middle of a

recession and a shop-at-home campaign -- purchased some fine china to

eat their dinner on during council meetings.

When Bob reported the price tag on the china and that the city had

bought the dishware in Mission Viejo instead of Huntington Beach, the

expensive plates and bowls were sent back to the store.

Despite his nose for news, Bob always took the time to write

glowing features about the good guys and gals in town, especially

those he felt were doing good for the right reasons.

Ask editors who worked with Bob and they’ll tell you he was never

shy about telling them what he thought of some of their decisions or

their bad headlines. But they all have nothing but respect for him.

“I’m not sure the people of Huntington Beach know what a treasure

they had in Bob Barker,” said William Lobdell, former editor of the

Independent and Daily Pilot newspapers. “He was the ultimate city

watchdog, and I’m sure he saved the taxpayers millions over the years

from salary spiking to china being bought in the middle of the

recession. There are a lot of people who understand his contribution

to the city, but there’s also a lot of people who just don’t. He is

the ultimate Superman in the disguise of Clark Kent.”

This from Chuck Loos, a former managing editor at the Daily Pilot,

where Bob worked for nearly 30 years:

“I’ve always considered Bob to be one of the good guys,” Loos

said.

Loos said that when Bob worked at the Daily Pilot he was a

versatile staff member, holding jobs as copy editor, reporter and

bureau chief of the Huntington Beach office.

“He always got the story straight,” Loos said. “And he has a great

sense of humor.”

That’s what I always appreciate about Bob, also.

We could be in the middle of some deep story on Bolsa Chica or

city finances, but he always had time for a joke or a prank or to

keep up the running feud between us over which was the better

football team -- Bob’s beloved USC Trojans or my gutty UCLA Bruins.

These days, Bob sure is getting the best of me on that.

Bob only found out in the last month or so that he had a brain

tumor. After doctors discovered it was malignant cancer, they

performed surgery on him but were unable to get it all.

He’s undergoing radiation treatment for now.

“If that doesn’t kill it then they will have to go to

chemotherapy,” he said.

Despite all of that, he still has that sharp wit and hearty laugh.

Shortly after he graduated from San Jose State, which he used to

refer to as “the Harvard of the West,” Bob started his newspaper

career in the 1960s as a sports writer for a now-defunct daily paper

in Garden Grove. He came to work for the Daily Pilot in 1970 as a

copy editor and then moved to the Pilot’s Huntington Beach bureau as

a reporter in 1975.

He said that working at the Daily Pilot was “the most fun in my

life” because he had free reign in his reporting. It also helped that

he really enjoyed the people he wrote about.

“Norma Gibbs was the mayor when I started,” he said. “I really

liked her. I love the people of Huntington Beach, the good ones who

are doing good for good reasons. There was a plentitude of them.”

That quote makes me recall a conversation I had with the late

Audrey Wheeler. Audrey was a City Hall regular who never missed a

City Council meeting. Audrey told me what she appreciated most about

Bob was that in the 20 years or so that he covered Huntington Beach,

“you always knew he cared.”

Many people thought Bob lived in Huntington Beach, even though he

lived in Garden Grove the entire time he covered the city. You don’t

find many reporters who care like that these days.

“I tried to do it as honest as I could,” he said.

Bob moved to the Independent in 1991 after the Daily Pilot ceased

coverage of Huntington Beach, a move I know he felt much pain over.

He stayed at the Independent a couple years and then moved to the

Los Angeles Times for a few years and then back to the Independent in

a part-time position.

He retired from newspapering in the late 1990s, and things haven’t

been the same around here since -- I’ve tried to lure him back on a

number of occasions.

But Bob knew that he had more important things to do in his life,

such as travel with his lovely wife, Barbara, goof around with his

grandson, Trevor, play softball in a senior league and, of course,

tend to his beloved drought-resistant garden.

With all that going on in his life, he knew he couldn’t put all of

his effort into writing and reporting. And if you know Bob, he

doesn’t do things that he can’t give his all to.

So now, he needs to give his all getting well and beating this

cancer. I know he can do it, and I’m betting this cancer will be

sorry it ever picked a fight with the greatest newsman I know.

* TONY DODERO is the editor. He can be reached at (949) 574-4258

or via e-mail at tony.dodero@ latimes.com.