Bob Storey

INTERVIEWING AS ART

Honored January, 1991

Robert 'Bob' Storey

BOB STOREY HAD A HEAD START ON OTHER REPORTERS.

“My dad was a lobbyist for the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau for thirty years” he said. “In our family, books and politics, debate and expression were always a part of the family.”     

 Born in 1947 in Las Vegas, New Mexico, and raised in Albuquerque, Bob grew up in a home where dinner guests often included New Mexico governors, judges and politicians. “I thought everyone had these guys to dinner,” he recalled. Bob attended school in Albuquerque and graduated from Highland High School.

Bob hadn’t planned to be a journalist; he wanted to be a marine biologist. But after serving a stint as editor of the University of New Mexico daily, the Lobo, Bob was hooked. The man who had the greatestinfluence on him as a journalist, as a writer, was Tony Hillerman.

In 1969, Bob was voted the outstanding senior male journalism graduate at the University of New Mexico. After the two-year hitch in the army, he moved to Santa Fe in 1972 and began working for theNew Mexican. He spent the next sixteen years working as the editorial writer, state government political reporter, business editor and assistant weekend editor. He covered every political campaign from 1968 to 1988.  Bob “asked the hard question and held me and other politicians he covered to a high standard of integrity. Yet he always gave credit where it was due.” New Mexican Congressman Bill Richardson says. In 1983 the congressman asked Bob to accompany him and a congressional delegation to El Salvador to oversee an Easter truce in the civil war.  Bob was one of the first United States journalists to be allowed to visit a political prison at a time of rampant rights abuse.

Bob was instrumental in creating the Santa Fe Community College, through his editorials in support of community education. He considered passage of the bond issue that financed the college as the “proudest moment” in his life. After he retired from journalism, Bob enrolled at the Santa Fe community College and earned a degree a computer science.

Bob met his wife, Sandy when they both worked at the New Mexican. They raised a son, Anthony. “Sandy is one of the pleasures in my life because she has always supported everything that I’ve done. It takes quite a bit for a woman to be married to a reporter who has to cover the Legislature.”

In retirement Bob did public relations - as a volunteer - for the Governor’s Conference on Aging.  The experienced journalist shared his sexperiences with Living Treasures volunteers, training them in the techniques of interview and oral history.

Upon learning that he was terminally ill in his mid-forties, Bob turned his concern to the high number of Santa Fe teens who had reported thoughts of suicide. “If I were still writing editorials,” he said, “I’d be right in the middle of it.” *

*From an article by Kay Bird, New Mexican, October13, 1991