Jim Reid, former Press Democrat reporter, dies at 77

In Sonoma County courtrooms for a quarter century, Jim Reid was the broad, bespectacled, bearded fellow who watched the proceedings closely, listened intently and pencil-scratched voluminous notes.

Reid wrote many police-beat and other types of news stories for The Press Democrat, but he was best known for his complete, insightful coverage of criminal trials. He was widely respected by attorneys, judges and other regulars at the county Hall of Justice.

Fellow reporters regarded Reid as a no-nonsense, gruff-countenanced newsman whose baritone laugh nearly rattled the ceiling tiles.

Retired Press Democrat reporter Bob Klose said that as an old-school crime writer Reid “tenaciously plodded from one report desk to another in police and sheriff headquarters throughout the county.”

“Reid looked and acted the part,” Klose said. “He wore a coat and tie and a short-brim fedora that seldom left his head. He came into the newsroom around 10 a.m., plopped down in his chair and wrote his stories from notes written on copy paper with fat lead pencils.”

A longtime resident of Cloverdale, Reid died Jan 17 at Healdsburg Senior Living after several years of declining health. He was 77.

When he joined The Press Democrat as a reporter in 1965 he’d learned Russian and put it to use at a U.S. Army listening post in the Aleutian Islands and worked as a carpenter in Marin County.

His wife of 48 years, Jan Reid, said he was born in Louisville and as the child of a single mom spent a lot of time in the streets until his grandfather arranged for his admission to Castle Heights Military Academy and High School in Lebanon, Tenn.

He was there 10 years.

“He went home on holidays,” his wife said. Once, when he was maybe 9, she said, he took a long bus ride home and his mother forgot she was supposed to pick him up at the station.

At age 22 in 1961, Reid went into the army. There, superiors recognized his intelligence and sent him to Monterey Language School. Once he was proficient in Russian, he was stationed on Alaska’s Shemya Island and electronically listened in on Soviet military radio conversations.

“He loved it,” his wife said. She was surprised years later to go with him into a McDonald’s in Montreal and discover that her bilingual husband could speak French, too.

After he’d ordered in what sounded to her like perfect French, she told him, “I didn’t know you knew French.” She recalls him replying, “I don’t. I learned some in high school.”

Jim Reid studied at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. Hired onto the PD’s staff by former editor-in-chief Art Volkerts in 1965, he proved himself a taciturn, highly principled newsman.

Recalled former colleague Klose, “In his time, now considered the old days, when police and sheriff’s information was not carefully controlled by law enforcement, Reid would wade through wire baskets of arrest reports and booking sheets to pluck the best stories of the day.”

Klose said he’d then “return to the Press Democrat newsroom, where he would beat out three and four paragraph stories on an old Underwood manual type writer.”

“He was spare with words and chit-chat. Short and deliberate grunts communicated the tasks he was fulfilling and then he’d float his copy into the in-basket in front of former news editors Dick Torkelson and, later, John Purroy, and then head out the door.”

Added Jan Reid, “He loved every minute of it.”

Away from the newsroom and the police stations and courtrooms, Reid relished his family, travel, personal computers and old-time radio.

In addition to his wife, Reid is survived by his children, Leslee Vellutini of Cloverdale, Jim Reid of Petaluma, Kelley Reid of Carlsbad, NM; Jaimie Bergeron of Morgan City, LA; 10 grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.

Reid’s family is planning a celebration of his life for the spring.

Memorial donations are suggested to the Family Justice Center, 2755 Mendocino Ave., Suite 100, Santa Rosa, CA 95403; Catholic Charities, 987 Airway Court, Santa Rosa, CA 95403; Redwood Gospel Mission, 101 6th St, Santa Rosa, CA 95401; or St. Vincent de Paul Society, 610 Wilson St., Santa Rosa, CA 95401.