Bob Darden was not the most gifted reporter with whom I have ever worked.
His copy at times required heavy editing. He often was behind in getting his stories turned in. He didn’t enjoy controversy and preferred not writing those difficult but necessary stories.
But Bob was one of the most loved reporters with whom I have ever worked. Considering where he is now, that’s probably a whole lot more important.
Bob, who died early Tuesday morning at his home in Cruger from a terminal liver disease, and I had worked together for 17 years. He was one of my grand experiments — a local person who had no journalism background but who I thought could be developed into a reporter.
Bob and I first connected when he began writing letters to the editor, sometimes critical of what I had written, particularly if the subject was gun control, and sometimes not. He wrote a few guest columns, and then came on board as a full-time reporter.
Susan Montgomery, a longtime writer and editor at the paper, remembers that on Bob’s first day I called her aside and told her that I wanted her to be nice to him.
In this business, there’s not a lot of bringing a person on slowly. Bob was thrown immediately into the job, covering Greenwood City Council meetings, crime and the like.
Our reporters are considered “general assignment,” meaning that they are expected to cover everything. But over time, they develop an expertise in specific areas, usually because those topics interest them personally. For Bob, that was farming and veterans issues.
His farming interests were something he inherited. He grew up a city boy in Virginia, the son of a federal government attorney. But he took to the Mississippi Delta on his summer visits to his maternal grandparents in Cruger, and eventually he and his siblings would come to inherit their farmland. Bob moved to Mississippi to oversee the holdings, which were rented out.
Bob also developed a forte for what we call “page 1 obits.” In a small community like ours, deaths are big news, and when someone prominent dies, we try to do more than what is provided by the funeral home. That means interviewing family, friends and associates, similar to what a preacher might do in preparing a eulogy.
Bob handled those stories particularly well because he had a way of making people feel comfortable, even in their time of grief. In another life, he would have made a good funeral home director.
Bob was popular in and outside the newsroom.
Two former school superintendents, Les Daniels and Cedell Pulley, jokingly squabbled with me one day about which of their districts should get Bob as their assigned reporter.
Daniels, who headed the Greenwood district at the time and wasn’t always fond of our coverage, said, “I want Darden.” Pulley, the Leflore County superintendent, responded, “You can’t have him.”
I did not take that as a particularly strong endorsement of Bob’s watchdog instincts.
Bob got along well with his colleagues, befriending the young reporters who would come here for their first newspaper job. It was also in the Commonwealth’s newsroom where he met his wife.
Jo Alice, who grew up in Greenwood and taught English at Greenwood High School early in her career, had moved back here from Ohio to retire with her husband. Their plans were upended, though, when he suddenly died from a heart attack. Jo Alice, who had worked in corporate communications and later edited business books and women’s fiction, joined us as the lifestyles editor.
Her desk and Bob’s were located about 20 feet apart. Their friendship turned to more after she heard him absentmindedly quoting one day a song from the musical “My Fair Lady,” which had been one of her and her late husband’s favorite movies. Jo Alice took that as a sign that Bob had gotten heavenly approval as a potential soulmate.
Toward the end of Bob’s time with us, he began to struggle with bipolar disorder, a mental health condition that was probably genetic. I remember one painful Saturday when he struggled for hours and hours to crank out a story. The words were just not coming together for him.
After his condition stabilized, he tried to learn to be a truck driver, but that didn’t work out. Then he got the job at Life Help as a peer counselor, which was a perfect fit — not too stressful but worthwhile work, using his own experience with mental illness to try to help others in much worse shape.
Even after he was put on hospice care, he told friends that he was going to get strong enough to go back to work. Sadly, that didn’t happen.
The day before he died, my wife and I went out to Cruger to see Bob and Jo Alice. Before our arrival, I apologized to Jo Alice for not coming sooner. Always gracious, she said, “Life sometimes gets in the way.”
By then Bob was mostly sleeping in the hospital bed that had been set up in their front room. The only sounds coming from him were some snoring and the hiss of the oxygen tank.
While that sad image of a friend dying is stuck in my head for now, I don’t think it will be the one that lasts. The Bob I will remember most is the sweet man whom no one could help but like.
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
Bob Darden: 1959-2022
