As a 16-year-old entering Stanford, Bob Fuss dreamed of someday sitting as a justice on the Supreme Court. That was before he joined student-run KZSU radio, reporting on the almost-daily Vietnam war demonstrations on campus. "KZSU's live coverage was so good that the sheriff's office often listened in to find out what was going on," recalls communication professor Harry Breitrose, PhD '66, then the station's faculty adviser.
The thrill of reporting breaking news launched Fuss on a radio career that has run a quarter-century. Now he works across the street from the justices -- as the Capitol Hill correspondent for CBS radio.
In an average day, Fuss might attend half a dozen news conferences and sift through reams of congressional bills to pick the top stories of the day. The last year, of course, has been anything but average in Congress. "It was uncomfortable talking about the president's sex life on the radio," says Fuss, who often broadcasted live all day during the impeachment proceedings. "It was not a story that I enjoyed."
Another scandal that shook the nation -- the Patty Hearst kidnapping -- led to his first big assignment back in the '70s. As a Stanford senior freelancing for UPI radio, Fuss joined top reporters in staking out the Hearst mansion in Hillsborough. By age 22, he was chief of UPI's Los Angeles bureau, overseeing coverage of all Western states. His broadcasts during his 15 years as bureau chief included live reports on San Francisco's Loma Prieta earthquake, the Malibu Hills fire and the Academy Awards. Fuss has covered every presidential race since 1980, when he traveled with Reagan's first campaign. But his favorite assignment was the Voyager space mission, a series of unmanned flights to the outer planets in the 1980s. "Every day I'd sit and watch these pictures that rewrote the astronomy textbooks," Fuss recalls.
"Bob's a great reporter, but there are two things he does not know how to do: get grouchy and get tired," says NBC TV news correspondent Pete Williams, '74. He and Fuss were Arroyo dormmates during freshman year. In their junior and senior years, the two aspiring newsmen lived in a Manzanita trailer and shared a dinner-table ritual of watching Walter Cronkite.
"Bob's the most optimistic, inexhaustible, adventurous person I have ever met," Williams says. "He approaches life the same way he approaches journalism." Inspired by covering the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, for instance, Fuss learned to ski -- despite a birth defect that left him unable to walk without crutches. He also loves river rafting and tells of a trip down the Zambezi River when his raft overturned, dumping him in crocodile-infested waters. He hoisted himself out using only his arms.
On campus, Fuss is well-remembered as a dynamo, whether dashing to class on crutches or speeding through the Quad in his golf cart, says Harry Press, '39, who worked for the University's news service in those days. The crutches didn't seem to slow him down: "His legs just flew through the air and never touched the ground. Nothing was going to get in his way." Clearly, nothing did.
-- Tracy Jan, '98
