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By Phill Casaus

Special to the Democrat

After half a century of journalism excellence, one of Natchez’s best Ollie Reed Jr. died Tuesday, Nov. 19, in New Mexico.

He is survived by his sister Patricia Yost of Louisiana and brother Rick Reed of Alabama. Ollie Reed Jr. was a 1966 graduate of Cathedral High School, where he was active in Cathedral track, basketball and football.

His classmate Charles Garrity remembers Ollie Reed Jr. as a “quiet, not outgoing but not shy gentleman who would do anything for anybody.”

“I never thought of him going into journalism,” Garrity said. “He put others ahead of himself and he was a good Christian person. He lived out those Christian values all his life.”

According to his brother Rick, they both worked at The Natchez Democrat. Rick Reed worked as an advertising artist when Ollie Reed Jr. began his Journalism career at his hometown newspaper in 1973.

In 1976 he was lured to the Southwest by The Albuquerque Tribune, where through the years he served as a City Hall beat reporter, sports writer, theater critic, columnist, arts editor and we-need-a-great-story specialist until the afternoon daily closed in February 2008.

Following The Trib’s demise, Reed was out of journalism for seven years until he hooked on with the Journal, where his work chronicled New Mexico’s dual personalities: the easily understood and the absolutely inexplicable.

Ollie Reed Jr.’s writing was never so coarse. His work brought to mind an earthy elegance that was as illuminating and true as a north star in the New Mexico night.

Reed, who covered the good, bad and beautiful in the state for more than 40 years and as recently as Sunday offered an incisive look into his own love of journalism, was found dead Tuesday at his home in Corrales.

He was 76. He could’ve passed for 55.

Those who knew Reed — and given the longevity of his career at two Albuquerque newspapers, that number is incalculable — were crushed by the news. Friends said he’d been ill in recent days but declined to visit a doctor. When he didn’t report for work Tuesday, a friend checked in on him and found his body.

Journal assistant managing editor Donn Friedman, in a memo to staff sent out Tuesday by new executive editor Jay Newton-Small, said Reed “will be missed for his insight and his humor in both the written word and the spoken story. If there ever was a true cowboy poet of the newspaper heyday, it was Ollie Reed Jr.”

“He was one of the finest feature writers this state has ever been blessed to have, and an incredibly nice man — a quality that shone through in every story he wrote,” longtime Journal sports writer Rick Wright wrote on Facebook. “He’ll be missed on so many levels.”

His cheerful, earnest personality disarmed even the toughest of subjects, some who hated nosy reporters but loved the guy with the syrupy Mississippi Delta accent and trademark cowboy boots.

The footwear was not an affectation: Reed loved the West, particularly the cowboy culture, and did some of his best writing on the subject. For many years at the Trib he penned “Trail Tales” — stories about a disappearing or, in many locales, never-known way of life.

Reed could have reinforced one of the walls in his home with the state and regional award plaques he’d won through the years; he was a study in no-sweat newspaper versatility. Late in his career, he evocatively wrote about adventures taken with his brother Rick in places as varied as Mississippi and Montana.

Though his features were a treat to read, he also covered some of New Mexico’s biggest stories.

When the Cerro Grande Fire in 2000 nearly leveled the town of Los Alamos, he was there. More than two decades later, he was on the scene at the massive Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak blaze — interviewing survivors, writing about their lives, offering a 20/20 look into how disaster can change a future.

His readers will miss his writing. But his friends said that pales in comparison to how much they’ll miss the man. “The thought of no longer hearing his laugh bounce off the newsroom walls is only softened by the fact that we were all so blessed to have him around while we did,” wrote the Journal’s Matthew Reisen.

To most, he was a mononym — neither Ollie nor Reed but OllieReed. The very mention was a code word for civility. He mentored green reporters, interviewed wary sources and endured know-it-all editors with a kindness not universally found in newsrooms.

“He is one of my dearest friends, but the thing is, everybody who knew him called him their dearest friend,” said Joline Gutierrez Krueger, a colleague of Reed’s at both the Journal and Tribune. “People in our orbit would come and go, but they would always keep in touch with Ollie. He was our touchstone.”

Having seen so many changes in newspapers throughout his career — he preceded cellphones, computers, the internet — Reed took a keen interest in the evolution of the craft. He wrote about the thrill of reporting in Sunday’s Journal, looking back on the Watergate scandal that was revealed by two tough Washington Post staffers. And in 2023, spurred by an Albuquerque Museum exhibit about local journalism in the 1970s, he wrote about the business he entered and the one that now exists.

“In 1974, confronted by truth uncovered by newspaper reporters, a U.S. president resigned from office,” Reed wrote. “Now, if people don’t like the truth as printed by newspapers, they go to the internet to find narratives better suited to their views.

“The people who work for newspapers are as dedicated and hard working as they ever have been. There are fewer of us now.

“But we’re still here because there is only one truth, and it’s our job to report it, to provide news for the people.”

The style is unmistakable — clean, telling, genuine. Very OllieReed — a timeless original whose humanity said it all.

Editor’s note: Phill Casaus is the former editor of The Albuquerque Tribune and worked with Reed for 11 years. He is currently the executive director of communications and engagement at Albuquerque Public Schools. Casaus also was a longtime staff writer and sports reporter for the Albuquerque Journal.