Former City Hall Reporter Jack Roberts Dies At 77
When Spokane had two newspapers and newsrooms had Underwood typewriters, there was one reporter who knew City Hall: Jack Roberts.
For 30 years, he covered city government for The Spokesman-Review, a fixture so reliable the City Council declared “Jack Roberts Day” when he retired.
Mr. Roberts died Friday of cancer. He was 77.
At a time when news competition was so fierce Review reporters could not even use the Spokane Chronicle entrance to the newspaper building, Mr. Roberts was a beat reporter in a felt fedora and a trench coat, a pocketful of pencils always worn to stubs.
“He knew city government as well as anyone, including anyone in city government,” said former Review city editor Paul McNabb.
Mr. Roberts’ quiet friendliness and calm objectivity earned rare respect from both sources and colleagues alike.
“I just don’t think they make them any better than Jack was,” said former Mayor Neal R. Fosseen.
“He was an institution,” said former City Manager Terry Novak. “He expected that the general public could handle the facts, so he sought and reported the facts - as opposed to situations where the facts are secondary and writing an interesting story is first.”
Born March 13, 1919, in St. Joseph, Mo., Mr. Roberts graduated from Benton High School in 1937 and studied music at Northwest Missouri State. Drafted before Pearl Harbor, he served more than four years in the infantry and Army Air Corps, where he edited a camp newspaper and was a public relations specialist.
In 1946, he joined the St. Joseph Gazette, his hometown paper that first reported Jesse James had been shot. Mr. Roberts moved onto the Salt Lake City Tribune and United Press in Seattle before joining the Review in 1953.
At City Hall, Mr. Roberts knew the politics and players so well he could predict what would happen and understand why it had.
“He educated the people he wrote about and the people he wrote for,” said former associate editor Dorothy Powers.
Former Mayor Vicki McNeill said at his last City Council meeting: “You care not only about what you have written but you care about your city.”
Yet he also took each new reporter the opposing Chronicle hired under his wing and met and interviewed some of the century’s luminaries: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Adm. Chester Nimitz, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington and Ronald Reagan.
Mr. Roberts retired in 1984. He wrote for the Spokane Business Examiner and Eastern Washington University before finally slowing in the late 1980s to travel with wife of 50 years, Cordella.
She knew he was terribly sick when he stopped reading three newspapers a day. His death came on the same day that the Review’s longtime courthouse reporter, Kathleen O’Sullivan, died.
Mr. Roberts was a member of the El Katif Shrine Temple, Eagles Aerie No. 2, Missouri State Historical Society, the Association of Lawmen and Outlaw History, the Friends of the James Gang and St. Augustine’s Catholic Church.
He played clarinet in both the El Katif Concert and German Band and in the Eagles Band. He’ll be buried in his Shrine band uniform, the collar pressed sharp.
Mr. Roberts is survived by his wife; two sons, Jeffrey M. Roberts and Brett A. Roberts; a daughter, Kimberly J. Webster; two grandchildren, three stepgrandchildren and one stepgreat-grandchild, all of Spokane.
A vigil service will be held Friday at 7 p.m. in the Rose Chapel at Hennessey-Smith Funeral Home, 2203 N. Division. Visitation will be today and Friday. A funeral Mass will be celebrated Saturday at 1 p.m. at St. Augustine Catholic Church, 428 W. 19th, with the Rev. Robert Pearson officiating. Interment will follow at Moran Prairie Cemetery.
Memorial contributions may be made to the Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children, 911 W. Fifth, Spokane 99204 or to Cancer Patient Care, 924 E. Trent, Spokane 99207.
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