Longtime St. Louis Post-Dispatch journalist Bob Posen died Saturday. Reporter Michael Sorkin shared the news with colleagues via this obituary on the newsroom's intranet:

Ten days after Bob Posen got his first job in journalism, the Korean War broke out.

Posen, a St. Louis native who had just earned a crisp, new diploma at the University of Missouri, was a second lieutenant of artillery in the Army reserves. He soon found himself on the front lines, adjusting artillery fire.

After three months in the infantry, the Army put him in a Piper Cub airplane and made him a forward observer. His job was to fly over enemy lines, see whether our artillery was hitting anything, and count any enemy dead.

He recalled being fired upon many times.

Bob survived, returned to pick up his career in journalism and eventually joined the Post-Dispatch, where he worked for 35 years. He retired in 1994.

He was the newsroom's jack-of-all trades: his jobs included sports editor, city editor and wire editor.

Bob died Saturday (June 25, 2011) at the Barnes-Jewish Extended Care facility in Clayton after having a stroke on Dec. 26. He was 82.

Bob started at the Post-Dispatch in 1958 after working at the Casper, Wyo., Tribune-Herald and returning to Missouri to work at the Mexico Ledger.

He started as a sports writer covering high school and amateur sports. He helped start the paper's All-Metro teams and Scholar-Athlete program.

His next job required him to get to work at 3 a.m.

Remember, the Post-Dispatch was an afternoon paper until 1984. Bob was the early morning sports editor, what one of our house ads called the "starting quarterback." He went through the overnight copy and picked out stories and columns to use and also did the layout.

When his time in that particular purgatory ended, he became a sports writer, covering big-time tennis and boxing, including two of Muhammad Ali's championship fights.

In 1970, he moved across the room to the news side as a copy editor. The bosses noticed his skills and made him editor of the the Sunday News Analysis section and of a special 12-page weekly then distributed free to area schools.

He moved up the ladder, becoming night city editor, makeup editor, city editor, copy desk chief, executive sports editor, wire editor and news editor.

As wire editor, Bob was the national and international editor. Reporting to him were a half a dozen correspondents in the Washington Bureau plus six editors on the wire desk.

Bob fought to keep the quality of the paper high. He compared reports from the Associated Press with those from United Press International. When they didn't agree, he wanted to know who was right and insisted that both services double-check their facts. Bob fought a losing battle during the 1990s to keep the paper from dropping UPI to save money.

After retirement, Bob was a regular at the Friday luncheons for retirees and read the paper every day until his stroke, his family proudly told me.

The family plans a memorial service in August or September. The body will be cremated.

Survivors include four daughters, Paula Beatty of Mesa, Ariz., Cynthia Turner of Seattle, Jane Posen of St. Louis, and Rachel Posen of Hong Kong; two brothers, Stephen Posen of New York and Michael Posen of Eugene, Ore.; seven grandchildren and four great grandchildren.

His second wife, Sandra, died in 2002. They met at a concert at the Symphony. Although they were sitting in different rows, they struck up a conversation about the performance and married in 1967.