For more than 40 years, Bob Carter was at the centre of the Banffshire community as a respected and conscientious newspaper reporter.
Bob, who died eight days after his 90th birthday, began his career at the weekly Banffshire Journal and later made his name at The Press and Journal and Evening Express.
A newspaperman to his fingertips, Bob could be fairly described as a journalist of the old school whose ethos was to strive for accuracy.
Indeed, one of his favourite mantras in his job was: “If in doubt, leave it out.”
Robert Thomson Carter was born in Macduff in 1931 and was the third oldest in a family of five sons and one daughter of bus driver Andrew Carter and his wife Mina.
Educated at Macduff, and Banff Academy, Bob left school at 16 and began work in 1947 as a “pupil reporter” with the Banffshire Journal in Banff.
His sister Alyson, his solve surviving sibling, recalled: “He had to master shorthand up to 100 words per minute and touch-typing, and his pay for a five-and-a-half-day week was 20 shillings.”
Bob did his National Service in 1950 and 1951 in Gibraltar, mainly on administrative duties. He relished the experience and often spoke about it in later life.
In 1957 he was appointed Banff district office reporter for The Press and Journal and Evening Express and he remained with Aberdeen Journals for 34 years.
He was skilled in all aspects of a reporter’s trade, from hard news to sport, and he particularly enjoyed the cut and thrust of local council debates.
Many readers knew him from his popular Around Banffshire column, which ran weekly in the Evening Express for decades.
Away from work, Bob enjoyed local history, classical music and golf.
He was the longest-serving member of Banff Town and County Club and a past president.
Bob and his wife Margaret met when they were both employed at the Banffshire Journal and they married in 1961.
They had no children and her death in 2011, shortly after their golden wedding anniversary, was a particularly sad blow to Bob.
Although he retired from reporting in 1991, Bob maintained a keen and often critical interest in the newspaper world.
Earlier this year he became a resident of the Durnhythe care home at Portsoy where he celebrated his 90th birthday.
John Thomson, a former colleague who knew him for more than 40 years, said: “Bob was a superb role model for the many young reporters who worked with him in Banff. His death really does feel like the end of an era.”
Bob’s ashes were interred at his wife’s grave at Myrus cemetery, Macduff.
