Letter to editor praises Bob Downing

Beacon Journal reporter Bob Downing was praised in this "Voice of the People" letter in the newspaper today:

The Beacon Journal’s Bob Downing is a national treasure. He survived the paper’s downsizing by increasing his writing. He’s there for us as he hires a plane to overlook Stark County’s fiery landfill.

If you happened to walk the Ohio & Erie Canal on a summer holiday, you couldn’t
blink, because that would be Downing whizzing by on his bike. That is, if he wouldn’t be out West hiking the trails he writes about.

Isn’t there a national media award for an outstanding environmental writer.

Joanna Dobbins
Akron

Scroll down a bit to read our nostalgic piece about Downing’s daugther, Caitlin, who praised him in a drawing contest way back in 1981. In a statement she submitted with the drawing reprinted in a Sidebar issue in July/August 1981 she wrote, "My dad’s a good reporter”