Albuquerque – Robert H. “Bob” Johnson, a champion for open government and a former Associated Press executive who wrote AP’s first bulletin on the assassination of President Kennedy, has died. He was 84.
After retiring in 1988, Johnson helped start the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government and made a new career out of fighting for public access to government meetings and records.
Johnson suffered a stroke Saturday as he prepared to go to work at the foundation, where he served as executive director. He died that evening.
“He was a workaholic all his life and was right up to the end,” said his wife, Luise Putcamp Johnson.
A native of Colorado City, Texas, Johnson joined AP in Dallas in 1946 after serving as a Marine lieutenant in World War II. He was recalled to active duty as a captain in the Korean War.
He was assigned as Indianapolis AP bureau chief in 1959, then returned to Dallas as Texas bureau chief in 1963.
That year, on Nov. 22, Johnson was in the newsroom of the Dallas Times Herald, adjoining the AP office, when he heard an unconfirmed report that Kennedy had been shot.
United Press International, then AP’s archrival, had scored a beat on initial reports of the shooting when Merriman Smith grabbed the mobile phone in the pool press car traveling in the president’s motorcade and refused to let AP reporter Jack Bell take his turn.
After confirming the facts with a photographer who was 30 feet from Kennedy, Johnson turned to his typewriter: “President Kennedy was shot today just as his motorcade left downtown Dallas. Mrs. Kennedy jumped up and grabbed Mr. Kennedy. She cried, ‘Oh, no!’ The motorcade sped on.”
While still in Texas, he oversaw coverage of the Gemini and Apollo space flights from the Houston Space Center.
He moved to New York in 1969 as AP sports editor and in 1972 managed coverage of the massacre of Israeli athletes by Palestinian guerrillas at the Munich Olympics. Johnson became AP’s managing editor in 1973 and then moved up to assistant general manager and assistant to the president from 1977 to 1984.
“Bob Johnson was the quintessential AP newsman who thrived on breaking news, the bigger the better,” said Mike Silverman, AP’s managing editor. “As sports editor and as managing editor, he taught an entire generation of AP journalists the importance of quick, accurate work under deadline pressure, and his lessons were always laced with grace and good humor.”
Johnson is survived by his wife; a son, R.H. Johnson of New York; five daughters, Luise Robin Poulton of Salt Lake City, Jan Leah Tapia of Albuquerque, Stephanie Neale Niketic of Newburyport, Mass., Jennifer Anne Robyn of Monroe, Conn., and Ann Tapia Johnson of Salt Lake City; a brother, Richard S. Johnson of Denver; four grandsons; and three granddaughters.
