Laurels Pile Up for Retiring KCBS Newsman

For nearly four decades, Bob Melrose was there to report the stories that rocked the Bay Area: the Caldicott Tunnel fire, the Jonestown suicides, the assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the murder of Laci Peterson.

Now, after 36 years, the Martinez resident with the distinctive voice is clocking out.

"The news gods were always playing with me, good and bad," he told the  Contra Costa Times.

“He truly personifies the old-time newsman. He lives it. He breathes it,” KTVU television reporter Rita Williams, who shared an office with Melrose at the San Francisco Hall of Justice for 20 years, said in KCBS radio's profile. of the veteran one colleague calls "the Coltrane of radio."