Journalist to be inducted into The State-Record Hall of Fame

The thing about Bob Talbert was this: He was so doggone readable that he became a habit.

As a sportswriter and columnist for The State during the 1960s, Talbert hooked his audience with simple storytelling that read like a letter from a friend eager to share something new. Later, as Detroit’s premier newspaper columnist for more than three decades, Talbert charmed a tough town through an estimated 9,000 columns that were must-reads each morning in the Detroit Free Press.

South Carolinians valued Talbert, a son of Spartanburg, as a home-grown voice with affection for all things Southern.

Detroiters – including many native Southerners whose families migrated to the Motor City to work in auto plants and steel mills – loved him as one of their own.

“He wrote for us. About us. To us. But never above us,” Michigan actor Jeff Daniels said when Talbert died in 1999 at age 63.

Talbert on Tuesday becomes the ninth inductee to The State-Record Hall of Fame. The hall was established two years ago to recognize outstanding journalists whose work enriched the pages of The State and the Columbia Record newspapers. Talbert also is a member of the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame.

Robert Beveridge “Bob” Talbert developed his folksy, conversational style long before bloggers and social media fanatics flooded the Internet. Talbert’s mission as a columnist was to connect with early risers who might find his morning offerings worthwhile. Or at least entertaining.

Did they ever.

“Bob Talbert brought a wry, rambunctious and immensely readable quality to the pages of The State,” said Bob Spear, longtime sports editor and sports columnist for the newspaper. “When he wasn’t wrestling bears, riding elephants and chronicling the shenanigans of moonshiners, he could be serious and thoughtful – as witnessed by his moving reportage of the earthen collapse at the construction of a new post office on Assembly Street, a tragedy that killed several workers.”

Talbert was raised in Spartanburg, the son of a theater manager. Young Talbert worked the candy counter and handled other odd jobs, while fitting in a childhood stint as a batboy for a minor league baseball team in Spartanburg. A passion for sports and a reporter’s curiosity led him to the University of South Carolina and, eventually, a job in The State newspaper’s sports department, where he reported on everything from the growth of NASCAR to hunting and fishing.

“He could write anything,” said Pat Robertson, a Spartanburg journalist whose outdoors reporting was prominent in the pages of The State for decades.

At The State, Talbert brought equal enthusiasm and respect to stories of celebrities and every-day people – a quality that set a tone in 1967 when he was recruited to the Free Press in Detroit. Editors at the giant newspaper were not in unanimous agreement that this burly, Southern boy was the right fit for the Detroit market.

The skeptics were proven wrong. Talbert’s easy style was just what the Free Press needed as it recovered from a monthslong labor union strike that halted operations at the city’s two large daily newspapers. In addition, Talbert’s Southern style hit the Detroit market at a time when American taste – at least among TV viewers – made successes of ’60s shows including “The Andy Griffith Show,” “Hee Haw,” “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.”

Talbert quickly became a welcome personality in Detroit, where he populated his columns with tidbits and chats with some of the city’s most notable politicians, musicians and characters. Among those were Motown founder Berry Gordy and the talented, troubled singer Marvin Gaye, who used to call Talbert deep in the night for long talks.

What most folks remember from Talbert’s Detroit days were his recurring columns labeled “Out of My Mind on a Monday Moanin.’ ” The columns were a rat-a-tat-tat brain dump of random thoughts and musings that were easy to read and repeat. A sampling:

“You get old in a hurry when you discover your children are studying in history class what you studied in current events.”

“I firmly believe you are what you hate.”

“Most men believe a woman’s place is in the home and expect to find her there 30 minutes after she gets off work.”

Talbert died in Michigan after entering a hospital for a triple heart bypass and heart valve replacement surgery. He was survived by Lynn, his wife of 25 years; a son, Dr. Jason Talbert, of Michigan; and a daughter, Dafna Sprouse, of North Carolina.

In reporting his passing, the Free Press reprinted an earlier quote in which Talbert described how he did his job:

“I’ve never considered that what I do is really difficult. Everyone has access to the same people, the same events. I just go and observe what they say and what happens, and come back and write about them.”

This story was originally published July 5, 2015 at 8:50 PM with the headline "Journalist to be inducted into The State-Record Hall of Fame."