SALT LAKE CITY — Robert Clarke "Bob" Blair, the former Salt Lake Tribune reporter who helped the paper win a Pulitzer prize, died Monday at 102 years old.
The Salt Lake Tribune announced Blair's passing Saturday with an obituary written by reporter Tony Semerad. Blair's family tells the Tribune that he died peacefully in a Sandy nursing home from natural causes.
Blair was among a team of reporters, photographers, and editors that quickly mobilized to cover a 1956 midair collision of two passenger planes over the Grand Canyon that killed 128 people. The coverage earned the Salt Lake Tribune its first Pulitzer prize for Local Reporting.
Over the course of his 40-year career, he worked as a reporter, a "rewrite man", as well as an editor for the paper's society, women's, and editorial pages.
A celebration of life is planned for January 31 at Starks Funeral Parlor in Millcreek.
