We learned this week that Bob Erlandson died Friday at ninety-four, brought down by a massive stroke. Among the Baltimore Sun reporters I esteemed over three decades, he holds a high place. Other veterans, some who worked more closely with Bob than I did, have been saluting him online, and I owe him my modest tribute.
I saw in the newsroom that Bob always spoke his mind, clearly and forcefully. I admired hiss love of dogs and bagpipes -- I saw him march in his pipe band in the Fourth of July parade in Towson. He and I exchanged messages in recent years, and he respected and encouraged my work.
He was much more conservative in his politics than I am, as many letters to the editor published in The Sun, written in his lengthy retirement, demonstrate. But crusty as he was in expression of his views, he was neither a bigot nor a fool. Two days before he died, he dismissed Donald Trump and all his works in a Facebook post:
"Trump has only ever wanted two things from his adherents: votes and money. What has he given in return: chaos, anger, division and ever-richer billionaires.
"The world has seen the damage Trump has wreaked in less than one year in office. Unless he is blocked by a loss next year who knows what further damage he can do on his march to becoming the American King."
But the thing that elevates him to that high spot of my estimation was his return to Baltimore after his term as a foreign correspondent ended. The repatriation of the correspondents was always tricky. They had lived well, often banking their salaries and living at The Sun's expense. They had enjoyed enormous latitude in the scope of their reportage, with very little direction from Calvert Street. Not all of them adjusted smoothly to a return to mundane Maryland journalism.
Bob had been our correspondent in London, in many ways the prestige post (we owned a house there). And he settled down immediately as a reporter in our Baltimore County bureau, turning out prompt and polished copy until the day he retired nearly thirty years ago. He was as thoroughgoing a professional journalist as any I have ever known. He respected the work, he did the work, and he deserves to be remembered for how he did it.
