For those of us who have heard Bill Roberts’ stories of his youth – and if you’ve only heard one once, you are a rare individual indeed – we know that his having survived to adulthood is something of a miracle.
Long before and well after he developed his lifelong habit of pushing boundaries, Bill endured tribulations from Ohio to Pittsburgh to southern California that defy reason – medical or otherwise (ask him sometime about his two appendectomies) – and certainly had formative influences on the man that is today closing out his 26-year tenure as the Herald’s Editorial Page editor. For that, Bill, the Herald, and Southwest Colorado are incredibly lucky.
And then there are the adventures – or misadventures – that Bill and his compatriots concocted and miraculously survived over his earlier decades, all of which served to compound his luck and our own.
For what all of these experiences produced is a man who looks deeply, critically and with equal parts intrigue and irreverence at the world around him – in a manner that is wholly, uniquely and unabashedly his own. Sometimes frustratingly so, but that is the core of Bill’s many contributions as a writer, editor and observer of life in Southwest Colorado and beyond. That he also can ably turn a phrase is gravy.
Bill has lived in Durango for the better part of 40 years, and I have known him for about half of that time. We met when I was an editorial assistant at the Herald while in college, united by our shared sordid past as alumni of Sweeney’s Grubsteak – the iconic steakhouse formerly located at the intersection of County Road 203 and U.S. Highway 550.
Over the ensuing two decades, Bill has become an immutable fixture in my life as a now-former colleague whom I respect for his unyielding intellect, outrageous humor and steadfast commitment to the role of journalism – good journalism – in the world, and especially in our community.
This commitment reflects an underlying loyalty that makes Bill an excellent advocate for community journalism and the Opinion Page as an essential venue for conversations about important issues at the local, state and national levels.
He is loyal to the Herald’s readers, and has demonstrated that consistently for more than two and a half decades by providing astute, relevant, challenging and insightful opinions that have raised the level of discourse in this community.
It is for all of these reasons that Bill is not just my former colleague but also my dear friend. He has been, over the nearly 20 years I’ve known him, a trusted confidant and a steady advocate. We also share a propensity for rather outrageous language when not filtered by a keyboard; maybe it was Sweeney’s that did it to both of us. For that friendship, I’ll listen to any of Bill’s stories 100 times. Oh wait. I have.
The bottom line is this: Despite his curmudgeonly veneer, Bill is a soft-hearted sweetheart – an undeniable fact for anyone who knows him, and one that is visible to the discerning reader. For at the core of everything Bill has written over his many, many years at the Herald is a deep love for this community and an unwavering commitment to ethical and just behavior.
He has built the Herald’s Opinion Page into a force that, to use a favorite Bill phrase, “punches above its weight.” For that and all of Bill’s contributions, we are all incredibly lucky.
Megan Graham is a former Herald associate opinion editor. Reach her at meganegraham@icloud.com.
