DECATUR - Bob Fallstrom speaks the way he has been writing for more than half a century: Short. To the point. Interesting.

"I pride myself on being different," the Herald & Review community news editor said.

"I didn't go to college. I had six children. I stayed here at the paper for 60 years. I co-founded a jazz society (Juvae Jazz Society). I'm one of the founders of the GM Square Neighborhood Organization (he's lived in that neighborhood for 50 years). I collect giraffes (he means giraffe ornaments). I don't know anybody else who does that. Must have 75 or so by now ?"

And that 60 years reference wasn't a misprint.

Fallstrom, 82, started his career at what was then the Decatur Herald on Jan. 3, 1949, when he was 22. He's kept hammering away on typewriters that morphed into computers through the reign of 11 U.S. presidents and more editors and publishers than you could shake a pencil at.

He's been a sports writer, columnist, sports editor, lifestyle editor and now the community news editor as part of the lifestyle section. He's a firm believer that age is more a state of mind than medical reality, but he does acknowledge he could get around a bit quicker in his younger days. That's probably just as well when he had a man-mountain wrestler called Andre the Giant chasing his hide.

For latter-day readers who only know Fallstrom in his present incarnation as a kind of octogenarian Good News Bear, it's kind of hard to imagine he could annoy anybody. The happy stories he collects and writes that appear in the Herald & Review D section every Tuesday celebrate shining, happy people doing nice things.

But Fallstrom wasn't always like this. Type in "Fallstrom" in the Herald & Review's computerized library system and the easily befuddled software actually asks if you meant the word "maelstrom," which isn't so far from the truth. Back in the days when he commanded the sports section, the Fallstrom maelstrom shot from the hip in acid-dipped columns that stirred up a lot of reader wrath, and he loved it.

"We used to have pro wrestling come to Decatur," he recalled.

"There was this wrestler called Andre the Giant - more than 7 feet tall, 500 pounds - and when he was coming here for a match, I wrote, 'The freaks are coming to town.' Andre had seen that, and when I went to the dressing room at the Civic Center to talk to the wrestlers, he started after me. I made a quick exit, and then they banned me from going to the dressing rooms and talking to these guys at all."

Fallstrom's always been the type of guy who did it his way. Born in Dixon on Dec. 5, 1926, he loved sports but his pint-size frame wasn't very good at playing any of them. He started calling scores into the local newspaper in grade school and discovered that if he couldn't play what he loved, reporting on it wasn't a bad substitution.

He was working on the Dixon Evening Telegraph by the time he was a junior in high school. Drafted into the Army at the tail end of World War II in 1945, a proficiency at typing eventually saw him sent to the Pentagon, where he worked in the Adjutant General's Office and attained the rank of technical sergeant.

Uncle Sam wanted him to stay on at the end of hostilities, but Fallstrom wanted his newspaper back and went home to Dixon and the Telegraph. His reputation as a savvy writer was spreading, and when the Decatur Herald offered him a weekly wage of $67.50 on that fateful day 60 years ago if he would only head south and writes sports for them, Fallstrom jumped ship for the first and last time.

"I wanted to try my wings somewhere else," he said.

By 1964, he was sports editor, a job he also quickly assumed for the Herald's sister paper, the evening Daily Review. He kept on in the post through the papers' acquisition by Lee Enterprises and continued as sports editor after the two publications merged into the Herald & Review in 1982. He ran himself and his staff ragged covering college sports and 100 high schools and also kept up a steady barrage of literary grenades in his sports columns. He'd once attended a seminar on column writing that said you ought to have something to say or shut up, and he took that to heart.

Fallstrom savaged the Illini when they were terrible and, a devoted White Sox fan, enjoyed taking potshots at the hapless Cubs and even his beloved Sox, too, when they committed the sin of losing. He told deer hunters to leave Bambi alone and stop killing things for the sake of it. "And I said slow-pitch softball players were sissies," he added with a surprisingly bright smile.

"I'd be writing five or six columns a week, all kind of opinionated, and I remember one Sunday we ran a whole page of letters that were against me."

He continued dodging the slings and arrows of outraged readership until 1986 when the chance came for a complete change of pace as lifestyle editor, and the old sports warrior jumped at it.

Fallstrom has circumnavigated several lifestyle section roles since then and now seems more than contented as the community news editor, writing upbeat stories about local happenings and lauding community heroes who make life more pleasant for everyone.

Sometimes his columnist's gunslinger trigger finger gets the occasional itch, but Fallstrom is generally glad he doesn't have to confront today's sports scene. "It's too commercial now," he laments. "Too many teams, too many games, too many everything. I could really say something about all of that but, well, I'm the good news guy now, and I like it."

His bosses like him right back. Todd Nelson, publisher of the Herald & Review, said Fallstrom is a newspaper phenomenon.

"He's just amazing," Nelson said. "For anybody to work in any industry for 60 years is unusual, but knowing the newspaper business and the intensity we have in what we do in creating a new product every day - and doing that for 60 years - that is truly amazing."

Herald & Review Editor Gary Sawyer said Fallstrom is usually the first one in the newsroom every day - "he turns on the lights" - and continues to illuminate the lives of countless readers.

"Everywhere I go, people mention Bob, and they always have a story to tell about him," he said. "And whether they like slow-pitch softball or not ? they are usually pleasant memories."

Looking back over the long years, Fallstrom said perhaps he could have moved on (that lack of a degree still sticks in his mind) but recalls he had a good, steady job with a family to support and, on top of everything else, it was fun. "When I was my own boss, I could do anything I wanted to do," he said. "And I'd rather be a big fish in a small pond."

That public recognition Sawyer mentioned hasn't escaped his attention, either, and Fallstrom said it's a source of pleasure to feel you've made a difference in people's lives. Asked how long he can go on making that difference, he quotes the example of Joe Paterno, the Penn State football coach who is 82 and still working.

Fallstrom said Herald & Review executive sports editor Mark Tupper (a Fallstrom hire) figures Paterno believes if he quits coaching, he'll die. "I think that is probably true," he said.

"For me, this is all I've ever done, I never did anything else: I don't play golf, I don't fish. I've always had the work ethic, and I still like to see my stuff in the paper. I still think I can write a little bit. I enjoy talking to people, and this job is still something new every day. I think if I retired, I would not last very long."

Bob Fallstrom facts:

- 1949 was a fateful year for Fallstrom. He started his job at the then-Decatur Herald and met his late wife, June, on a blind date to see the circus in April 1949. They were married six months later and stayed married for more than 50 years. June Fallstrom died Oct. 23, 2000.

- The Fallstrom children: Kristin Hargrove, a teacher at Franklin School in Decatur; Douglas Fallstrom who lives in Hawaii; R.B. Fallstrom, a sports writer for The Associated Press based in St. Louis; Jerrold Fallstrom, a regional editor with the Orlando Sentinel newspaper in Florida; Rolf Fallstrom, a factory worker in Lexington, Ky.; Erik Fallstrom, who works in a bookstore in San Francisco.

- There are also 10 grandchildren and one great-grandchild. A granddaughter, Sarah Fallstrom, is a graphic artist for the Chicago Sun-Times, the third generation of the family working in newspapers.

- Occasionally, when Fallstrom does have some spare time, he likes to spend it listening to jazz and is a passionate fan of America's music. In the past 10 years, he's also picked up a bad case of the travel bug, visiting more than 25 countries, including China and the continents of Antarctica and Africa. And ever since a hungry African giraffe knocked him off his feet while he was feeding it from a second-story balcony, he's had a soft spot for the long-necked critters and collects giraffe ornaments, toys and keepsakes.

treid@herald-review.com|421-7977