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Bob Izzard, Amarillo

J

Jamey K

Bob Izzard past away Thursday, Sept 16 at age 87.

Besides being a war hero, Bob was News Director at several Amarillo radio and TV stations. Most notably at KPUR in the 80's where he would end each newscast with " Bob Izzard. 14...........KPUR.

Here is his obit:http://amarillo.com/obituaries/2010-09-19/wesley-robert-bob-izzard

Bob was a great guy and used radio better than anyone else I've ever known. Bob never "read" a newscast in his life- he "told" the news.

It's been a tough year in the Panhandle with the losses of Clint Formby, Eric Stevens, Mark Robertson-Baker and now Bob.
 
That's a name I hadn't heard in a long time. He was news director at KTXS in Abilene, as indicated by his obit, but I never knew that was one of his last TV jobs. I worked at KTXS from 1987-1990, and heard all sorts of stories from some of the people who knew him (both there and from KTAB and KRBC, his competitors). Never knew how many were simply apocryphal or how many were the truth.
 
Here's a few:

1. Bob came in one morning to find the AP machine had jammed over night. He didn't say anything..he just left. I was wondering what I was going to do, when he came back five minutes, later with the Amarillo paper in one hand, and the Dallas Morning-News in the other. He picked up the phone..dialed numbers from memory. All he said was "This is Izzard. Yes...yes.. ok..Thank you." Made a few notes. At 6:20, he looked through the glass at me and talked the news for five minutes. He looked at his notes a couple of times. One of the most amazing things I'd ever seen.

2. When the Challenger blew up, we knew Bob was our resident aircraft expert. The jock on the air asked him one question, and he talked 15 minutes about the shuttle, without repeating himself. He told me later, he had bought a copy of the "Space Shuttle Manual' and read it.

3. A guy offered $500 towards our Community Christmas Tree effort, if Bob would read "Twas The Night Before Christmas." Bob did...the guy paid, and we got more requests for that, than Grandma & Reindeer, for the next several years.
 
As the KFDA (Amarillo) New Mexico News "stringer" in the 1970's, I freighted my 16 mm film visuals via Greyhound bus from Tucumcari New Mexico, then phoned in an audio cover.

Whoever answered the phone would record my 60 to 90-sec. audio; sometimes News Director Ron Slover, other times any of the other on-air reporters. Sometimes it was Bob. When the recording task was done, he often engaged me in conversation over the more peripheral, and not necessarily newsworthy dynamics of my stories. He was truly interested, no matter how urgent it was or wasn't. More to the point, for me, this was testimony to Bob's deep love for the local news business, and the people who made it work. I felt like his brethren, even if only over the phone.

During this same time, I also did brief stringing stints for KGNC-Radio and the Amarillo Globe Newspaper. Chats with them revealed that Bob was a household name in the Amarillo market. Bob could be a real character. More importantly though, Bob POSESSED character.
 
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