Portales, N.M. – Newspaper humor columnist Robert “Bob” E. Huber, one of two people taken hostage during the 1967 armed assault on the Rio Arriba County courthouse, has died. He was 76.
Working for United Press International during the 1960s, Huber covered Gemini and Apollo space missions, along with the famed courthouse raid led by land-grant activist Reies Lopez Tijerina in Tierra Amarilla on June 5, 1967.
Tijerina and his followers, attempting an unsuccessful citizen’s arrest of the district attorney, shot and wounded a state police officer and jailer, beat a deputy and took Huber and the sheriff hostage.
“He got in the car, and they held a gun to his head and told him to drive,” said Huber’s daughter Tracy LeCocq of Roswell.
The hostages later escaped. Tijerina spent about three years in prison.
Huber, who died Friday at his home, started writing a weekly humor column in 1994 for the Portales News-Tribune and Clovis News Journal.
His adventures with boyhood chum Smoothe Heine prompted editors to run a tag line: “Some of his stories are mostly true.”
“I’ll miss him. I’ll miss his laugh,” said another daughter, Holly Huber of Roswell. “He was a true practical joker. He loved to make people laugh.”
Huber was born June 27, 1931, in Denver. At 17, he served in the Coast Guard between World War II and the Korean War, then attended the University of Colorado. His career in news included work at the Roswell Daily Record and The Denver Post.
A memorial service is set for Sept. 22 at the family’s property in Roswell.
