Robert Lee Mann

Bob Mann lived one helluva life. 

The professor, journalist, political consultant, and aide to congressmen and senators, including Ted Kennedy and his family, father, mentor, grandfather, friend, brother, and exuberant life-liver, passed away at his home in Austin on Nov. 30, 2020. Thanks to the excellent care of Hospice Austin, he was surrounded by his family, dogs, and a house filled with memories and memorabilia built up over 76 years of hard working, hard living, and hard loving. His death was beautiful, spirit-filled and peaceful after a wild and wonderful life. 

Bob is survived by daughters, Liz Stewart and her husband Duff and their children Adam, Noah, and Gracie; and Amy Mann and her husband Bob Miner and son Jacob Marsing. He is also survived by siblings, Peggy Marshall and Johnny Mann and his wife Sudie; and nephews, Kory and Kevin Galbreath and their children. He is also survived by partner and caregiver Tina Garcia.

Bob was born April 4,1944, in St. Louis, Mo., to Wayne and Vivian Mann, who met during the height of the Second World War while Wayne was serving in the United States Army. Shortly after they married, his father shipped to Italy to serve as a radio operator. The family was reunited when Bob was two and moved to Jacksboro. After their third child John was born the family moved to Cameron.

While the academic rigor of math or science may not have inspired him in school, baseball, Stan Musial, Roy Rogers, and using the written word to bring color and expression into the world did. He sank all his energy and effort into a job writing obituaries and sports stories for the Cameron Herald, beginning at age 12. As a teenager he was known to have an occasional backyard brawl to defend his sister or brother. The Mann family did not hesitate to voice their opposition to injustice and segregation in all its forms, and Bob was the first one to stand up for marginalized people.

He graduated from Cameron Yoe High School in 1962, and went on to earn a Bachelor’s degree in journalism from Sam Houston State University (SHSU) in Huntsville in 1966. In 2018, that same college awarded him a spot on their wall of honor. 

In January of 1966, he got his first job offer and went to work for the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram. In his three years there, he worked as a copy editor, reporter, and night city editor. Most notably, Mann was the Star-Telegram’s reporter on the ground in Memphis, Tenn., in April 1968 on the night Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, scrambling to a phone booth to relay his reporting back to the desk in Fort Worth as the situation unfolded. 

In 1969, he began to seek opportunities beyond simple bylines and the day-to-day life of a reporter. “I wanted to be more than a journalist,” he said years later. “I wanted to be an advocate.” In that spirit, he was accepted to graduate school at the University of Colorado and earned his Masters Degree in 1970.  Upon moving to the Rocky Mountain West, he and his small family settled in the town of Longmont, where at the age of 25, he was hired as the managing editor of the Longmont Daily Times-Call, making him one of the youngest managing editors of a daily paper in the country. Bob spent a year and a half living in Longmont, making lifelong friends in Boulder County. 

After moving back to Texas, he took a position as the assistant city editor of the Dallas Times Herald. Before long, he navigated his way into academia for the first time as an assistant professor, and later Department Chair (still in his 20s), of the journalism department at Southern Methodist University. For the next four decades, Bob developed a love for teaching and sharing his experiences as a journalist in classrooms across Texas, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. He  was an adjunct professor at both the University of Texas and Houston-Tillotson University in Austin, where he retired in 2012. 

In 1977, Mann left journalism for the first time in his professional life to become press secretary for the office of U.S. Congressman Bob Krueger (D-Texas). He served alongside Representative, and later U.S. Senator, Krueger for years both as his official spokesman and as a political advisor on multiple campaigns for the United States Senate. 

In 1978, he joined the Carter Administration, taking a job in the White House as Assistant Deputy Director of the President’s Council on Wage and Price Stability followed by a stint with the Federal Communications Commission that came after his time in the White House. “We changed the world,” he said. “We took licenses away from people who would not hire minorities.”

In 1981, he accepted a position as Vice President of Carl Byoir & Associates in New York City where he became the senior account executive for Time and HBO, helping to build Home Box Office into the nation’s premier pay-TV network, and served as HBO’s liaison to the FCC, Congress, and the White House. That time in his life bore out many of the infamous “Bob Mann stories” that his family and friends will be telling for generations to come.

In 1984, Bob received a job offer that changed his life and spent the next three years as Sen. Kennedy’s press secretary and senior advisor, working with, learning with, and traveling the world with the lion of the senate and American icon who provided him the opportunity to change the country. During his time as Kennedy’s spokesman, Bob became notorious among the D.C. press for his boisterous barroom stories, his love of the little Texas town he came from, and packing a whole lot of energy into each day. He continued to serve the Kennedy family as a consultant and friend for the rest of his life. 

Bob Mann spent his life standing up for those who needed a protector. He could not abide racists, and actively worked to increase representation in newsrooms across America. A 1985 article in D Magazine, chronicled how he “rankled" the Dallas journalism community via persistent pitches for more ethical behavior and more minorities in newsrooms. In the last 20 years, Mann was a contributor to CNN, Fox News, the Austin American-Statesman, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

The title that he was most proud of in the last three decades of his life became “Grandpa Bob.” He loved showing his grandchildren, Adam, Noah, Jacob, and Grace the places he’d lived out his extraordinary life, introducing them to real suffering and encouraged them to use their gifts and talents to right the wrongs he’d witnessed first hand. 

Bob Mann charmed and was charmed by bartenders, CEOs, cab drivers, flight attendants, bellhops, elected officials, students, and strangers in cities from Denver, Colorado to Boston, Massachusetts and everywhere in between. In the final years of his life, he was happiest curled up in bed with his dogs, flipping between news shows and reading his newspaper.

Bob is preceded in death by his parents, Wayne and Vivian Mann; his granddaughter, Adeline Elizabether Miner; partner, Valerie Phillips; and numerous friends, bosses, and pets, who he’s now almost assuredly joining for a glass of Jack Daniels at heaven’s best dive bar. 

He is further survived by the hundreds of journalists across Texas and the United States he taught, pushed, motivated, and inspired in more than three decades as a professor. His family wants to ensure they know how proud he was to be “Coach Bob” to each and every one of them.  

Cremation has been entrusted to Austin Natural Funerals with private COVID-19 conscious services held in Austin on Saturday, Dec. 5. If friends, students, or extended family wish to attend the service via Zoom please contact us via email at noahmstewart@gmail.com. With the help of Marek Burns Laywell funeral home, his interment occured at Oak Hill Cemetery in Cameron on Dec. 7 at 1 p.m.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests memorial contributions be donated in Bob's memory to Sam Houston State University for the Arleigh B. Templeton Fellows Endowment for Community Engagement or the Bearkat Emergency Fund for students experiencing financial difficulties.  Checks should be made payable to Sam Houston State University and sent to the Office of University Advancement, Sam Houston State University, Box 2537, Huntsville, Texas 77341-2537. 

Online contributions may be made at: https://www.shsu.edu/dept/university-advancement/giving.html.