Composed former Sun city editor

Friday, June 6, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Bob Banes was as unflappable as any newspaper editor could be — calm on deadline, never one to yell or scream, even prone to comfort an excitable reporter with a few kind words.

But as newsrooms converted from typewriters to computers and the systems were brought to their knees by technical glitches, even Banes could be shaken to his core.

And that’s what happened the day the Las Vegas Sun’s computer system crashed for what seemed like the 34th time that day back in the ’80s. Banes picked up a nearby phone directory and flung it across the newsroom. Throughout the silenced room, eyes opened wide.

And then Banes got back to work.

Robert “Bob” Banes, a lifelong journalist who served as a Sun news and sports editor in the 1970s and ’80s, died of cancer Monday in Reno, said longtime friends Douglas and Judy van Aman, with whom he lived. He was 68.

Banes had returned to Reno in 2005 after his last journalism job, as assistant city editor of the Ventura County Star in Camarillo, Calif.

Born in San Francisco on Aug. 12, 1939, Banes grew up in Mill Valley, Calif., and attended Tamalpais High School.

As a teenager, Banes began his newspaper career as a copy boy for the San Francisco Examiner in the 1950s. After serving in the Air Force at a post near Peshawar, Pakistan, in the 1950s, he returned to journalism, working in the 1960s as a sportswriter for the Springfield Republican in western Massachusetts.

He moved to Las Vegas in the early 1970s to work for the Las Vegas Sun, where he was city editor. He then moved to Reno for jobs at the Nevada State Journal and the Reno Evening Gazette before returning to the Sun for another stint in the late 1980s. He was hired in 1993 at the Ventura County Star.

Banes is survived by two sons, Clayton Banes of Berkeley, Calif., and Justin Banes of West Springfield, Mass. During the Memorial Day weekend, Banes was reunited with his two sons, whom he had not seen since they were toddlers, Doug van Aman said.

A memorial celebration in honor of Banes is being planned for family and friends in August. Banes requested contributions be made in his name to the athletic fund of Procter R. Hug High School in Reno.