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BOB LIGON |
 Bob Ligon, upper left, and wife Eleanor with Ron and Darla Miller at a 2006 reunion in Santa Cruz, CA. |
How many friends can also
be role models for life?
of TheColumnists.com
Robert "Bob" Ligon suffered a stroke last week and died at age 79. Though I visited with him a bit last year and felt the warmth of his sunny personality, it was far from enough. Today I ache with regret that I didn't find more time in my schedule to really sit down with him and fully enjoy the company of this wonderful human being.
Bob was a working newsman when I first entered the business as a rookie reporter on the staff of The Santa Cruz Sentinel before going back to college and finishing my work toward a B.A. degree in journalism. He covered California's Santa Cruz County as a reporter-photographer--we called it being a "combination man" back then--for The San Jose Mercury News. We were competitors on rival newspapers, although I'm sure Bob lost no sleep worrying about any "scoops" I might get on him.
Though I was a punk kid, barely 19, Bob treated me with the respect he might have given a seasoned reporter. Maybe I thought he was impressed with my talent. Today that seems hardly likely. It took me awhile, but I eventually figured out that Bob Ligon treated everybody with respect. Even punk kids.
Around our newsroom, Bob certainly was respected. He was all alone, covering all the beats that all the people on our staff covered. And he regularly kicked our butts. I remember he came up with a major "beat" on us when he found out what the City Council had discussed in a secret meeting one night and printed that revelation in The Mercury the following morning.
"The guy is so likeable that people just tell him stuff," one of our reporters observed.
Though that certainly was true, I had my suspicions. The closed door meeting ran late and Bob had an early deadline for the zoned edition that was distributed in Santa Cruz County. I didn't think he had time to schmooze with the people after the meeting. Years later, when Bob and I were good friends, I tried to find out how he did it. Bob broke into one of those wide, slightly guilty-looking smiles I remember so fondly and told me: "I crawled into the bushes under the window of the meeting room and just listened in."
Not that Bob wouldn't have found out anyway the following day by tapping his sources. And he had 'em, all right.
Even though he scored beats on us frequently, most of the guys liked Bob personally and liked to hang out with him. Of course, we had to be careful not to let him hear anything we were working on or else we'd read about it in The Mercury the following morning.
The more I got to know Bob Ligon, the more I admired him. And the more I learned from him. For one thing, he didn't just cultivate a sunny personality so sources would trust him. He actually was a good guy in real life and didn't have to put on anything to get what he wanted. His secret, I think, was that he genuinely liked people and was truly interested in what they were doing. He knew lots of trivial stuff about the hobbies and special interests of news sources--not because that would ingratiate him with them, but because he just liked to know what made people happy.
The most important lesson I think I learned from knowing Bob was that being a man who gathers news for a community is an important calling and you should go about it with honesty as well as zeal. I don't think Bob ever used his reporting skills to "go after" somebody to hurt or embarrass them. I think he was a humanitarian whose own great love was his family. I'm guessing he would never do something he considered unprofessional or immoral, no matter how badly his newspaper might want the story that might result.
Bob never sat me down and gave me any lectures on such things. I learned from seeing how he conducted himself as a reporter. And I learned from seeing how he conducted himself as a fellow human being. If today's news reporters had the ethical foundation that Bob Ligon had, I think the world would be a better place--and we'd probably have more honest news about our world.
I don't think I ever did anything for Bob that would make him feel he owed me any favors. But he did an enormous favor for me that was unsolicited. In 1962, after I'd earned my degree and was covering county government for The Sentinel, Bob let me know there was a job opening at The Mercury and, when I showed interest, he arranged a meeting between me and the managing editor in San Jose.
The job was being a "combination man" based in Gilroy, CA. I would cover two cities in southern Santa Clara County--Gilroy and Morgan Hill--and all of San Benito County, a long, narrow county that stretched all the way nearly to Fresno in Centrala California's San Joaquin Valley. The cities I'd be covering there were the old mission town of San Juan Bautista and Hollister, the actual locale of the motorcycle gang takeover in the late 1940s that was the principal setting of Marlon Brando's "The Wild One." Like Bob, I would write up my stories on copy paper and put them in a package with the film I shot, then put them on board a Greyhound Bus to San Jose.
I got the job, thanks to Bob's heavy plugging for me, and that began my 36-year run at The San Jose Mercury News that finally ended in 1999 with my retirement as the paper's TV Editor and syndicated columnist.
I suppose Bob took some pride in "discovering" me for his paper, especially when I became a news bureau chief in the 1970s. Though I saw him infrequently in those years when I was in news, we started getting together in the late 1970s when my wife and I bought a second home on the beach in Santa Cruz and spent most of our weekends and vacations there.
By that time, Bob had retired from his newspaper job and started a new career as a landscape contractor. He loved plants and had the same magic tough with them that he always had with news sources. He took on the job of doing the landscape maintenance for our beach house. To his amusement, I loved telling people that "My gardener got me my job at the paper."
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Bob Ligon's second career was as a landscaper and cultivator of plants. He never
seemed happier than when he and his canine sidekick were working among plants.
In his later years, Bob became an expert in the cultivation of tree dahlias and was widely puiblicized for this work and the showcase gardens he'd created around his home in rural Aptos. He continued to write for many years, sometimes using pseudonyms, for the alternative papers in Santa Cruz County.
Bob also loved to travel, but I especially remember how sold he was on Greece. When he returned from his first trip there, he proudly wore a Greek sailor's cap that I hardly ever saw him without from then on.
When I look back on Bob Ligon, I realize he was one of just a handful of old friends that I considererd a role model for life. I wish I could say I'd done a good job of following his model, but I keep trying to be the open, caring man that I remember him being. He was good-hearted and always willing to help others. That sometimes got him into jams because not everybody can be as unselfish as Bob was--or as honest.
The world of modern journalism needs a lot more Bob Ligons--reporters who care what happens to others and not just because it makes good copy. I'll never forget the smile with which he greeted life, even when things hadn't been going so well with him or family members. I can feel the warmth of that smile still and hope I always will.
©2007 by Ron Miller. This column first posted Aug. 20, 2007.
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