JIM MINTER GUEST COLUMN: Bill Robinson’s words inspired, inspiring

Many years ago, when big-city newspapers were still real newspapers, there was assembled in The Atlanta Journal sports department a Band of Brothers arguably unequaled in talent and dedication in all of journalism.

Included were John Logue, later to become a founding editor of Southern Living Magazine and a prolific writer of fiction; Terry Kay, the hugely successful author whose books have been made into movies; Lee Walburn, national award-winning magazine editor and columnist; Gregory Favre, editor of major newspapers from Florida to California; Furman Bisher, one of the best and most durable of a small handful of truly great newspaper columnists to emerge in the 20th century; and for a brief and shining moment, Lewis Grizzard.

And then there was Bill Robinson. Years after they had all gone on to other things, Favre, a past president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, wrote that “Bill was the one who wrote as if there were an angel looking over his shoulder.”

Robinson made written words do things that no other could. He found poetry in the roar of stock car engines. Drivers didn’t just win races in his stories. They won by “running flat out, belly to the ground, chasing a hurrying sundown.”

From Tuscaloosa to Talladega, from Daytona Beach to Darlington, from Jordan-Hare in Auburn to Bobby Dodd Stadium in Atlanta, be the subject NASCAR or college football or whatever, those who read Robinson’s reports from the high press boxes of the South must have thought that an angel not only looked over his shoulder, but also guided his fingers across the keyboard of his
typewriter.

For 52 days, Bill needed that angel looking over his shoulder at the East Alabama Medical Center in Opelika. His triple bypass turned up complications. It was a long and sometimes painful pit stop before a massive heart attack called the race just when he was thought to be recovering at his son’s home in West Point.

Whenever the Band of Brothers from those distant days in Atlanta get together the best lines from Robinson’s best stories are repeated, because they are worth hearing again and again by those who appreciate sports journalism at it’s best, and most original.

The way that Richard Petty became “King Richard, the Hemi-Hearted” is a favorite subject among the Brothers.

Those who read Bill’s newspaper columns are aware of his knowledge of people and events from Beethoven to Bryant (Bear), from Jefferson to Wallace, and varieties in between. It was only natural for Bill, having read deep into English history, to see something of King Richard The Lion-Hearted in a young NASCAR star from North Carolina who muscled his way to green flags in a Plymouth with the acclaimed “Hemi” engine under the hood.

Not surprisingly, Bill was the NASCAR writer who first labeled legendary driver Dale Earnhardt Sr. “The Intimidator.”

Beyond the free-flowing prose, there is another side to this southern journalist and gentleman: A hard-nosed news reporter with a knack for listening that earned him scoops others missed.

When the Falcons arrived in Atlanta and the National Football League held its first meeting there, in the Marriott Hotel downtown, it was Robinson who wrote the first story about an impending player strike that would shut down the league. A player strike was an unheard of thing in the late 1960s, unmentionable in parlors of power, at a time when player unions were just beginning to flex muscle.

This bombshell, which Bill picked up by listening late into the night, sent NFL coaches and owners into a frenzy. He was angrily confronted by the great Vince Lombardi in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel. Pete Rozelle, the NFL commissioner, demanded that Bill write a retraction, saying the story was untrue. He refused, and his paper, The Atlanta Journal, backed him up. Sure enough, the players went on strike that summer. Bill’s story proved to be one of the major “scoops” in the history of professional sports.

The role Robinson played in the election of a relatively unknown state legislator from Perry, Ga., to take the seat of the legendary Richard Russell in the United States Senate stands tall in Georgia political lore.

Sam Nunn was little known throughout the state when he announced for the race, hoping that a crowd would show up for his hat-in-the-ring barbecue. Nunn went on to a major upset, became one of the most powerful senators in Washington, often mentioned — and asked to be — a presidential candidate.

Some political insiders will tell you that without Bill Robinson as his campaign press secretary, Sam Nunn might not have made it out of Perry, Ga. In addition to his magic typewriter that turned out eloquent campaign speeches and news releases, he had connections to political reporters and editors on The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution, then a potent force in Georgia politics. Bill only had to knock on their doors.

Until his surgery two months ago in Opelika, only two of the Atlanta Journal Sports Band of Brothers were still plying their old trade. At age 90, Furman Bisher in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Bill Robinson in The LaFayette Sun.

Bisher’s readers say he hasn’t lost a step, and they are right. Robinson, free to roam throughout —- and also outside —- the realm of sport, and with semi-retired time to let his memory pot come to full boil, may have written even better than ever, “running flat-out, belly-to-the-ground, chasing a hurrying sundown.”

Jim Minter is the retired editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.