Originally ran in Sunday March 7, 2021 editions of Louisiana’s Gannett Newspapers

On a fall Sunday morning in the late 1980s, a Twentysomething me got into the back seat of a car in the parking lot of The Times-Picayune in New Orleans to head downtown to help cover a Saints game. Driving was Times-Picayune executive sports editor Bob Roesler; next to him was the paper’s long-time lead columnist, Pete Finney.

“You can never tell anybody about this,” Roesler said to me. He was smiling, like you do when you’re about to share something no one would believe.

“Not anybody,” Finney said. “Ever.”

And I haven’t.

Until now.

What happened was they drove me on a Secret Path to the Superdome. Side streets and under overpasses. Cars sometimes above us and sometimes below us and sometimes backed up on parallel streets to our car. We never stopped moving. And suddenly, we were at the Press Gate of the Superdome.

Never seen anything like it.

These guys knew how to get places. And it was most definitely Their Town.

Mr. Pete died at his home in New Orleans on a summertime Saturday morning in 2016. For 68 years, he’d been a sports reporter and columnist for his hometown paper. A friend once described him perfectly as “perpetually cheerful.” On press row at the Final Four in 1988 in Kansas City, I asked him how much longer he planned to work.

“Work?” he said, his smile as wide as the basketball court. “This isn’t working!”

Every day was a holiday and every meal a banquet when you were around Mr. Pete.

And then last week Mr. Roesler died, age of 93. His career at the paper began in 1949 and lasted until his retirement in 1994. For most of the past 25 years he was out of the public eye, and for the past 10, he and his family and friends dealt with his Alzheimer’s. Yes, he took Alzheimer’s into triple overtime.

“No one can accuse Bob of not preparing his family and friends for this moment,” joked Bob’s nephew, Bill Haber.

That’s a line from a story last week for Crescent City Sports by Brian Allee-Walsh, who worked for Mr. Roesler a lot longer and knew him a lot better than I did.

“He was not a wordsmith and cared little about turning a colorful phrase,” Allee-Walsh wrote. “Rather he based his longstanding success and longevity on substance, accuracy and making a deadline. I can still hear him remind staffers ‘not to Red Smith it.’”

“Old school in every way,” Allee-Walsh wrote. And he was. Old school in all the right ways. It’s refreshing to think about, back in a Tweet-less, post-less world, when all of ball seemed fun, like recess all the time.

Mr. Bob brought a clear head and a genuine thoughtfulness to his job. What was best for New Orleans was what he was going to do. He lobbied his buddies in the NFL in the late 1960s and proved to be the point man in helping the city land its first Super Bowl, in 1970 in old Tulane Stadium, when the Superdome was still only a grand idea. New Orleans has hosted the game 10 more times since then.

Here are some thoughts from some of his friends in the Louisiana Sports Writers Association.

“He was one of Louisiana’s legendary sports journalists.”

“He certainly seemed to go out of his way to be very nice and encouraging to me back when I was first starting out.”

“He was a wonderful man, a great mentor and a helpful friend when I was so young and green and learning my way. He never made me feel like I didn’t belong in his world or his department. I’m sad he is gone but I’m glad his long battle is over.”

“Bob was a true giant in New Orleans sports journalism, a representative of a long-ago time when the local sports editor/columnist wielded great influence. Bob always did it to make his town a better place.”

He was so good to us newbies. Made you feel like one of the team right off the bat. Never a phony, never a bully, always a leader by example.

He knew that being authentic and putting others first was the way to get there. It’s the path less taken, but the right way and quickest way to get to where you really want and need to go never really was a secret after all.

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