Tears shed for Ollie Reed Jr., and by him, are part of the same marvelous story

A personal matter kept me from attending Friday’s celebration of journalist Ollie Reed Jr.’s life at the Albuquerque Press Club.

No doubt, a great many fond stories were told by friends and coworkers from the Journal, at which Ollie had worked for most of the past nine years, and from the Albuquerque Tribune, the city’s afternoon paper that folded in 2008, at which Ollie worked for more than two decades.

There were a lot of laughs, I’m sure, and I’m equally sure, some tears.

Tears shed by Ollie himself, though — many years ago, not witnessed by me, yet revealing — are what I’ve been thinking about the past few days.

In truth, I didn’t know Ollie as well as most of the people who attended that evening at the Press Club. We’d known each other for some 47 years, but from a distance.

We covered Albuquerque high school sports at the same time in the late 1970s, but for different newspapers. We’d worked together for years at the Journal, but in different departments.

Ollie and I would talk in the newsroom occasionally, usually reminiscing about the many friends, acquaintances and experiences we had in common through sports and journalism. He wrote an obituary story in 2023 upon the passing of New Mexico historian Marc Simmons, about whom Ollie had written before. I told Ollie I’d taken a history of Mexico class from Simmons as an undergraduate at UNM.

But Ollie and I had never worked side by side, never hung out, not once seen each other away from work.

I was absent in place, then, when my editor, Lucas Peerman, asked me if had a story or two to contribute to the Journal’s coverage after Ollie’s shocking death on Nov. 19 at age 76 (my age as well). Didn’t think so, I said.

There’s this one, though.

When Ollie and I covered prep sports, one Albuquerque boys basketball coach, known well by all, on rare occasions would be moved to tears after a game. (When that happened, it was never really about the game itself.)

After one such incident, as the coach cried, so did Ollie — tears rolling down his face. Again, I didn’t see this, just heard about it.

I don’t really remember my reaction to hearing this at the time, almost a half-century later. But it might have been this: “Gee, Oll, what’s with the waterworks? Lost your objectivity a bit?”

But now, after reading so many of Ollie’s wonderfully crafted stories in the Journal these past few years, I see it so differently.

The tears he shed that day, I believe, were the tiniest of windows into the empathy and humanity that made Ollie who he was: a storyteller who did not merely hear what his interview subjects said but felt what they felt — their pain, their joy, their dreams, their love of life.

All that, and more, Ollie was able to transfer to the printed page. For the Journal, and its readers, his passing is an incalculable loss.

For Journal online subscribers who perhaps are not aware, you’re invited to go back into past issues, as far as you care to, and read or re-read every Ollie Reed Jr. byline story you encounter. Then, believe me, you’ll know what I mean.

Of course, the Journal has other fine writer/reporters. But there was only one Ollie. I’m thinking one day, the Journal should publish a front page with a big hole in the middle.

As appeared in Monday’s Journal, funeral services for Ollie will be held on Dec. 5 at San Ysidro Catholic Church in Corrales. A rosary is scheduled for 9:30 a.m., the service itself at 10.