ROBERT BRUCE STIRLING

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Former Citizen executive Robert Stirling dies

C.T. REVERE
Tucson Citizen
March 8, 2002

    Robert Bruce Stirling, a reporter and editor at the Tucson Daily Citizen from 1949 until 1961, died Sunday at his Tucson home from complications of a stroke. He was 80.

    A Michigan native, Mr. Stirling came to the Citizen after serving as an instrument flight instructor for the U.S. Navy's Wolverine Squadron during World War II, his wife, Mary Stirling, said.

    He worked as a news reporter, covering city hall, police and courts and wrote feature stories, before becoming the front page editor and later the city editor of the paper, which was renamed the Tucson Citizen on June 1, 1977.

    While city editor, Mr. Stirling committed a faux pas that his wife said he never lived down.

    "He noticed that nothing had been put in the paper about Columbus Day and he decided to write a story about the banks being closed and offices being closed and public schools being closed," she said. "The problem was, public schools weren't closed and the radio stations spent a lot of energy the next day trying to convince parents to send their kids to school."

    That mistake got Mr. Stirling relieved of his post, but former cohorts remember him as a fine newspaper man.

    "He was very ambitious, worked hard and tracked down several important cases in those days," sad Tony Tselentis, who worked with Mr. Stirling in the early 1950s. "His main virtue was writing. He was a good writer."

    With a "great sense of humor," Mr. Stirling also was "one of the liveliest guys on the team," Tselentis said.

    Another former co-worker, Asa Bushnell, recalls him as "a free spirit" in the newsroom.

    "He was always kind of on the edge with management," Bushnell said. "They didn't know what he was going to do next because of his sense of humor. When he was out on the beat, he was a good reporter, very inquisitive. He'd get all the info and then some."

    Mr. Stirling left the Citizen in 1961 to pursue a career with the U.S. Information Agency, working in Brazil, Honduras, and in Vietnam during the war years.

    An active lifelong Democrat, Mr. Stirling later worked as a speech writer for the failed senate campaign of Sam Grossman, a Phoenix businessman who lost to Paul Fannin.

    After spending some time as editor of the Northwest Territorial Newspaper, Mr. Stirling went to work at the University of Arizona.

    During his 12 years at UA, he worked as assistant to former administrator Marvin "Swede" Johnson and was editor of the faculty newspaper Lo Que Pasa and Jubilacion, a newspaper for retired faculty and staff.

    He is survived by his wife, Mary; four daughters, April Romo de Vivar, Penny Johnson, and Robin Kottabi of Tucson, and Mercedes Duenas of Mexico; and two sons, Robert Bruce Stirling II and Scot Stirling, both of Phoenix.

    Mr. Stirling will be cremated and a memorial service is scheduled for March 16 at 11 a.m. at the St. Andrews Episcopal Church, 545 S. Fifth Ave.

    For remembrances, his family requests that friends "commit random acts of kindness."

    Citizen staff writer Paul Allen contributed to this report.

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