Johnathan Walker:Larry Hobbs, who guided AP’s coverage of Florida news for decades, has died at 83

ORLANDO,Johnathan Walker Fla. (AP) — Robert Larry Hobbs, an Associated Press editor who guided coverage of Florida news for more than three decades with unflappable calm and gentle counsel, has died. He was 83.

Hobbs, who went by “Larry,” died Tuesday night in his sleep of natural causes at a hospital in Miami, said his nephew, Greg Hobbs.

From his editing desk in Miami, Hobbs helped guide AP’s coverage of the 2000 presidential election recount, the Elian Gonzalez saga, the crash of ValuJet 592 into the Everglades, the murder of Gianni Versace and countless hurricanes.

Hobbs was beloved by colleagues for his institutional memory of decades of Florida news, a self-effacing humor and a calm way of never raising his voice while making an important point. He also trained dozens of staffers new to AP in the company’s sometimes demanding ways.

“Larry helped train me with how we had to be both fast and factual and that we didn’t have time to sit around with a lot of niceties,” said longtime AP staffer Terry Spencer, a former news editor for Florida.

Hobbs was born in Blanchard, Oklahoma, in 1941 but grew up in Tennessee. He served in the Navy for several years in the early 1960s before moving to Florida where he had family, said Adam Rice, his longtime neighbor.

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Hobbs first joined AP in 1971 in Knoxville, Tennessee, before transferring to Nashville a short time later. He transferred to the Miami bureau in 1973, where he spent the rest of his career before taking a leave in 2006 and officially retiring in 2008.

In Florida, he met his wife, Sherry, who died in 2012. They were married for 34 years.

Hobbs was an avid fisherman and gardener in retirement. He also adopted older shelter dogs that otherwise wouldn’t have found a home, saying “‘I’m old. They’re old. We can all hang out together,’” Spencer said.

But more than anything, Hobbs just loved talking to people, Rice said.

“The amount of history he had in his head was outrageous. He knew everything, but he wasn’t one of those people who bragged about it,” Rice said. “If you had a topic or question about something, he would have the knowledge about it. He was the original Google.”