BATTLE CREEK – For over three decades, he was there every Sunday. If he wasn’t there, that was the real news of the day, not what was in the papers he was hawking.
Bob Reichel is possibly one of the last American ‘newsies’. Standing on the corner of Capital Avenue and Van Buren Street in downtown Battle Creek, as ‘that newspaper guy’ – he has sold the Sunday morning paper for almost 31 years.
But after this Sunday, he will step away from that role, signifying an end of an era – and that’s the real headline here.
“This will be my last Sunday selling papers.. It’s been a good run… I’m going to miss it,” Reichel said, ironically breaking the news on Facebook, and now allowing for it to be said in the very newspaper he sells, as he spoke to the Enquirer this week.
“I do have a real job, another focus in life, but delivering the news has been an important part of what I have done over the years…. and I’m proud of that.”
Reichel, a member of longstanding Pennfield Township family, has been part of the fabric of the Sunday morning experience in downtown Battle Creek for more than 30 years. As the church crowd arrived, or folks were driving downtown for other reasons, selling to them through their car windows, he was there handing out the Sunday edition of the Battle Creek Enquirer, as well as other papers like the Detroit Free Press and New York Times.