Retired Las Vegas AP correspondent Robert Macy dies at 85

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Retired Las Vegas correspondent Robert Macy, who wrote thousands of stories about entertainment, crime and sports in Sin City over the course of two decades for The Associated Press, has died. He was 85.

Macy died early Friday in hospice in Las Vegas following a brief illness, his family said.

After graduating from the University of Kansas with a degree in journalism in 1959, Macy spent the next decade working in television, in public relations and for newspapers.

He began his almost 30-year career with the AP in 1971 when he was hired by the news cooperative as a writer in Kansas City, Missouri. Macy gained attention there early on for his coverage of a hotel pedestrian walkway collapse that killed more than 100 people.

A decade later Macy was in Las Vegas, where throughout the ’80s and ’90s he wrote about a virtual who’s who of entertainers, then staples of The Strip.

In 1988 he reported on the fatal police shooting of a man who took a 74-year-old employee hostage while trying to steal $1 million in jewelry from the Liberace Museum. Macy was there when singer Wayne Newton, known as “Mr. Las Vegas,” performed his 25,000th show in 1996.

He interviewed more than 200 celebrities, including comedians George Burns and Red Skelton and singers from Phyllis McGuire to Paul Anka to the Osmond Brothers. He also developed friendships with more than a few.

Macy knew entertainers Siegfried & Roy so well that when trainer and performer Roy Horn was attacked in 2003 by one of their white tigers, the AP story carried his byline even though he was already retired.

Macy retired from the AP in 2000 and the following year was inducted into the Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame.

He is survived by his wife, Melinda, of Las Vegas: son Brent and daughter-in-law Martha, of Las Vegas; and son Scott, granddaughters Kara and Savannah and great-granddaughter Azlynn, all of Leesburg, Florida.

Funeral services are pending.