It takes a special kind of person to work on a newspaper's night desk — an audacious sort who doesn't fear crushing deadlines and punishing hours.
Robert "Bud" Armstrong was such a tried-and-true newspaperman, working on the Star Tribune's sports desk for 44 years before retiring in 2009. Armstrong, of St. Louis Park, died Monday of interstitial lung disease at St. Joseph's Hospital in St. Paul. He was 79.
"For nightsiders working for a morning paper, so much happens each day and into the night, it's a tremendous process to be part of, pulling it all together — to make a thing you can hold in your hands and look at and say, 'I helped do that,' " said Steve Ronald, former deputy managing editor for the Star Tribune (and a former nightsider himself).
A native of Miami Beach, Fla., Armstrong graduated from Marquette University in Milwaukee in 1963 and worked at papers in Belvidere and Springfield, Ill., before being hired at the Minneapolis Tribune by then-Sports Editor Sid Hartman. "Every other applicant wanted to write as much as possible," Armstrong once told Star Tribune sports columnist Patrick Reusse. "I had no such ambitions. I wanted to work on the desk."
When the Star Tribune hired Reusse — who back in the mid-1960s had worked as a copy boy for Armstrong at the Tribune — away from the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1988, a TV crew covered his arrival. "There was a lot of hubbub," recalled Jim Walsh, a Minneapolis author, columnist and musician, who worked as a copy aide at the time. "Bud was sitting at his desk; his eyes never left the screen. Reusse said, 'Hey, Bud,' and Bud said, 'Patrick, here's my pencil, would you sharpen it for me?' "
Armstrong encouraged many budding journalists over the years. Mary Schmitt Boyer, part of a pioneering wave of women sportswriters in the 1970s, worked at the Tribune before becoming a sportswriter at the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the author of several books. She credited Armstrong with launching her career: "It was great to have a mentor like Bud, because then everyone else was nice to you."
An avid reader, Armstrong reviewed books for the Star Tribune, including several written by former Tribune colleague and Pulitzer Prize-winner Ira Berkow, a former sports columnist for the New York Times. "I was always grateful when Bud reviewed my books, since he was one of the few people who liked them," Berkow said.
Outside of work, Armstrong's interests were varied and just as passionate. A self-taught chef who didn't need a cookbook, he loved good food and wine.
