Shot in the hotel kitchen
example – he was the reporter sent to interview them.”
Blackburn was so well respected that he was handed a key, organisational position for the 1966 World Cup, which included games at Villa Park.
“I think the thing that made him most proud was being appointed Midlands press officer for the World Cup,” said Keith. “He organised all the international press passes.
“In fact, he was very sought after, particularly in the Black Country. He ran, almost singlehandedly, the Black Country Olympics.
“Dad was most at ease with ordinary people, not those from the upper echelons.
“He did an awful lot for West Bromwich Albion and got on great with the players, ground staff and those behind the scenes.”
His insistence to tell it as it was, and give readers the full facts, ruffled feathers. Blackburn’s relationship with club chairman Bert Millichip was particularly fractious.
Blackburn’s Baggies reports became near legendary among fans – and he was such a part of the club that the reporter appeared in a 1966 Sports Argus cartoon.
It depicts Blackburn excitedly bellowing down the phone to copytakers: “Krzywicki has scored – what do you mean, you can’t spell it?”
Fans sought Blackburn’s autograph, and a tribute page is dedicated to him on website WBA History.
On it, Keith writes: “The ‘Blackburn Blackburn’ byline was a familiar sight to readers of the Birmingham Mail, Sandwell Evening Mail, Sport Argus, Sunday Mercury, Birmingham Post and the Albion matchday programmes late 1960s and 1970s.
“John Wile’s weekly Argus column was ghost written by Blackburn, as was Janice (Oi’ll Give It Foive) Nicholls’ Sunday Mercury feature.
“He was one of those people whose work was more than just a job. For him it was an all-consuming vocation. From an early age his only ambition was to be a journalist and not the tailor that my grandmother wanted him to be.
“His determination was such that at the first opportunity he left home and got his first taste of the newspaper business as a copy runner and telephonist at the Daily Express office in Manchester.”
Blackburn also worked for the Liverpool Echo and freelanced for the Press Association before the war interrupted his career. He served in France, of the Belgium and Holland quartermaster sergeant.
After the conflict, and struggling to find paid employment, Blackburn worked briefly as a salesperson for St Ivel cheese before moving to Birmingham in 1954. He, Miriam and their two children lived in West Heath.
Miriam died 20 months after her husband.
Keith added: “During the football season he worked seven, often long, days a week and our lives at home were lived to background sounds of him conducting interviews or chasing stories on the phone or hammering away on his most prized possession, his Olivetti portable typewriter.
“Whenever he went out to work, the typewriter, his reporters’ notebooks and packets of fags were his constant companions. The interiors of his as a cars resembled the aftermath of a volcanic eruption with ash everywhere.
“It wasn’t just purely footballing matters that made the headlines at the Albion and Blackburn was usually the man to break the news.
“The 1964 players’ strike and disciplinarian manager Jimmy Hagan’s dramatic car plunge into the canal outside the Spring Road training ground are examples that come readily to mind.”
But all the stories were eclipsed by his American adventure.
“Do you know what?” laughed Keith. “I don’t think they gave him any time off for sacrificing his Los Angeles break. They didn’t in those days.”
For some Keith. a dedicated things don’t reporter, change, ROBERT Kennedy was shot after addressing campaign supporters at the Ambassador Hotel’s ballroom in Los Angeles’ mid-Wilshire district.
The 42-year-old had planned to walk through the ballroom, but it was decided he’d walk through the kitchen and pantry area to a press conference.
Gunman Sirhan Sirhan leapt from behind an ice machine and repeatedly fired a .22 calibre Iver Johnson Cadet revolver.
Kennedy was taken to the Hospital of the Good Samaritan to undergo surgery. He had been shot three times.
He was pronounced dead at 1.44am on June 6 – it was 26 hours after the shooting.
Sirhan, a Palestinian with strong anti-Zionist beliefs, was convicted of murder on April 17, 1969, and sentenced to death.
In 1972, the sentence was later changed to life imprisonment.
Now at the Richard J Donovan Correctional Facility, Sirhan continues to claim he was framed.