Robert Clark Cross, a genial and gifted writer whose award-winning work took him all over the world and graced the pages of the Chicago Tribune for more than 40 years, died May 31 in his Chicago home. He was 84.
Mr. Cross, a quiet and unassuming man who did not exactly fit the stereotype of a big-city journalist, had a long and varied career as a reporter and editor. It included stints as a researcher for Newsweek Magazine and as a reporter for New York’s Newsday newspaper in the 1960s, but most of his career was at the Tribune, where he worked until he retired in 2007.
With a penetrating intelligence, he was deeply curious about the reasons behind big events and about often overlooked, offbeat moments in American life. That curiosity, coupled with his gift for elegant but unstuffy, colorful prose made him a perfect match for the Tribune’s features departments, which underwent groundbreaking changes in the 1970s.
Mr. Cross’ name appeared over stories he reported on from every continent in the world and from every corner of America.
It was an unlikely journey for a boy born May 12, 1939, in the small town of Cheboygan, MI. Mr. Cross took an early interest in journalism, however, attending journalism school at Wayne State University, where he became editor-in-chief of the school newspaper before he graduated in 1962, soon landing jobs at top publications before settling in at the Tribune.
“In the 1970s and ‘80s, Bob was part of the Tribune’s daily Tempo section, a crew that revolutionized the former women’s features pages,” said Randy Curwen, under whom Mr. Cross worked both in the Tempo and Travel sections over the years.
“We did it with great writing on trends, styles and all the ‘new’ currents of American life that were not getting attention in the hard news sections.”
It was a strategy to attract men as well as women to the features section, previously restricted to covering women’s issues, Mr. Curwen said. It turned out to be a winning strategy in those pre-internet days, when newspapers still were a dominant advertising venue. The new approach to Tribune features pages began attracting more readership and thus more advertising dollars than ever before.
Mr. Cross was for years one of the star reporters and writers in those sections. The job his family said he loved the most, however, was as a writer in the Tribune travel section, where he worked for 14 years until his retirement.
“My father always loved to travel and explore new places and things, so he really loved being a travel writer,” said his daughter, Amy Lien Cross. “For years the Tribune travel section sent him all over the United States and many trips to Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.”
Mr. Cross often paid more attention to the people and history of places he visited than other travel writers.
Harriet Choice, one of his editors in the travel section, once sent him to France before the 40th anniversary of the Allied Normandy invasion during World War II. She said she was deeply moved by his descriptions of sites people could visit that conveyed the horrible price Allied troops paid for the successful invasion.
Even his stark opening sentence of the story was far from a typical travel story, she said – “The war was over. Our side won.”
“I edited thousands of stories during my career, and that is the only ‘lede’ paragraph I can recite word for word from memory,” she said.
When Mr. Curwen became travel editor, he said he and Mr. Cross decided Mr. Cross would do a series visiting the 10 most popular national parks in the U.S. Mr. Cross was so smitten by the parks that they extended the series to every national park in the system, 59 of them at that time.
“We decided he’d keep hitting the parks until we ran out of them or until Bob’s knees gave out,” said Mr. Curwen. “Bob’s knees made it to all but four that were deep in the Alaskan wilderness. It was a project he was especially proud of.”
Mr. Cross was recognized four times with a Lowell Thomas Award, the most prestigious honor in travel journalism, and the Tribune nominated one of his stories for a Pulitzer Prize, his daughter said.
“Bob was very soft-spoken, almost shy around others, so that it belied how truly good he was as a reporter,” said retired Tribune photographer Chuck Osgood. They worked together on many stories when both were on the staff of the paper’s Sunday magazine.
“People he interviewed just seemed to like and instinctively trust him. He was just fun to be around, with a terrific sense of humor, but always brought so much intelligence to what he was doing.”
Editors particularly liked his easy-going nature and professionalism.
“He didn’t make a lot of noise,” said Robert Goldsborough Sr., who was editor of the Tribune magazine when Mr. Cross was on his staff.
“He didn’t need much direction from me. We agreed on the stories he would work on, he went out and did the reporting, and when he would return, you hardly knew he was there as he sat and wrote.
“He was such a compelling, sensitive writer. He was just a a joy to know and work with.”
Mr. Cross met his wife, Juju Lien, then a social worker, when he interviewed her for a Sunday magazine story he was doing on Cambodian refugees.
“It was love at first sight,” said his wife. “We had opposite personalities, but our bond grew over our 40-plus years of marriage. Bob was very devoted to his family and to me as a partner. His love was like still water, quiet and deep.”
In recent years both Mr. Cross and his wife have struggled with health problems, Mr. Cross with COPD. Their daughter, Amy, an attorney, moved back to Chicago from New York three years ago to tend to her parent’s health needs.
The day he died, she was getting him ready to go to a doctor’s appointment when he asked to lie down and rest. He died a few minutes later, she said.
“He was always kind of mysterious, not just to me, but to other people, too. He sometimes seemed to be immersed in his own, inner-creative world.,” said Amy Cross.
“Growing up, I rarely read his stories. As an adult, I felt lucky to be able to read them and get to hear his voice as a writer and know him in a way I had never known him before.
Her father was elated, she said, when she became engaged to marry next October.
“He was always there for me, a reliable, responsible person, always letting me know that he loved me a lot.”
Besides his wife and daughter, Mr. Cross is survived by a sister, Lori Cross Reynolds and a brother, Douglas Cross.
He was preceded in death by his son, Gabriel, from his first marriage, and his parents, Warren and Meryle M. (Allaire) Cross.
The family plans to hold a celebration of Mr. Cross’ life at a later date.
Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.MalecandSonsFH.com for the Cross family.
SHARE OBITUARY
v.1.8.17