Patricia Montemurri

Free Press Special Writer

Always — in the face of news good or bad, contentious or scandalous — Bob Berg remained reasoned and publicly unruffled.

Charles Robert Berg, an Illinois farm boy who became a spokesman for two of Michigan’s most influential politicians, Republican Gov. William Milliken and Democratic Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, died Wednesday morning, according to Peter Van Dyke, who had worked with Berg for years. Berg was 76 and had dealt with multiple myeloma, a cancer involving the body’s bone marrow, for years.

When politicians have good news to share, they say it themselves. When they’re dealing with bruising controversies, it’s the spokesperson who must face the barrage of media inquiries. And Berg, who started out as a wire service and newspaper reporter, became a trusted pro for elected officeholders dealing with the thorniest of issues.

“I’m a kid who grew up on a small farm in east central Illinois,” Berg said in a 2019 interview. “The chance I had to come to Detroit and work closely with Mayor Young for all those years, looking over his shoulder and learning, on literally a daily basis, about race, urban issues, politics and his life in general had a profound influence on me that has continued until this day.”

Detroit’s first African American mayor hired Berg to be his press secretary in 1983, in part, on the recommendation of Milliken. Milliken and Young, while members of different parties and from extremely dissimilar backgrounds, worked closely and became friends in the 1970s.

They “had a fundamental commitment to creating equal opportunity at all levels and to confronting and solving urban issues,” Berg said in a 2019 interview with David Ashenfelter, a longtime former Detroit News and Detroit Free Press reporter who observed four decades of Berg’s career.

Throughout the years, Berg regularly visited Milliken at the former governor’s Traverse City home. When Milliken turned 97 in late March, Berg called in to a small birthday dinner and delivered birthday greetings via speakerphone.

“I will always think of Bob Berg in the fondest of terms. He was an outstanding reporter and a fine human being,” Milliken said. “He will always live on in my memory and the memory of all those people who knew him.”

Berg was “a unique breed of communicator,” said Charlie Williams, another longtime Young mayoral aide. Berg, a lanky 6-foot-3 runner and cross-country skiing enthusiast who descended from Swedish immigrants, seemed at ease in every setting and situation and earned Young’s trust. When journalists, authors and academics wanted “to talk about the Coleman Young story, Bob was the guy.”

“Most people know that that Coleman Young was not the easiest person to relate to or to put his perspective out there,” said Williams. “Bob challenged him sometimes.”

“He was one of the ones who’d tell truth to power. He’d tell the boss, ‘Mr. Mayor, you don’t want to hear this, but this is what you’re facing,' ” recounted Williams. “I’m sure he felt his wrath, like all of us sometimes. But at the end of the day, the mayor would say, 'Yeah, you were right.’ ”

Cool under pressure

Berg was the Lansing bureau chief for the now-defunct Panax chain of Michigan newspapers when he joined Milliken’s staff in 1977. When Milliken left office after deciding not to seek re-election, Young hired Berg. While he had dealt with controversy and political gamesmanship in Lansing, Berg was in the crossfire from the start of his tenure in Detroit.

Young’s administration was the subject of federal and local investigations into an alleged fraud and kickback scheme in what was known as the Vista Disposal sludge-hauling case, plus allegations that the city improperly loaned and overpaid a bus fuel supplier, Magnum Oil Co. Federal investigators tried to name Young an unindicted coconspirator in the sludge-hauling case. Agents even bugged the phone in a townhouse Young owned.

As Young’s press secretary, Berg was besieged by media almost daily. There was a firestorm of controversy roiling the Young administration during each of the 11 years Berg served as spokesman, easily outlasting three other spokespersons who worked for Young during his 20 years in office.

In addition to the Vista and Magnum cases, other disputes included a paternity lawsuit against the mayor by a longtime city employee, and the subsequent revelation that Young had indeed fathered a son — at 64 years of age. Another FBI and IRS probe uncovered that Detroit Police Chief William Hart and Kenneth Weiner, a Young confidante, looted the police department of more than $1 million. Young was never charged with any crimes. In his last years in office, Young, ailing with emphysema, made few public appearances compared with most big-city mayors.

“Bob handled it all with aplomb,” said Bill McGraw, who covered the Young administration for the Free Press for parts of its last two terms. “Bob was always a total pro and a gentleman. Beyond handling constant requests and questions about mundane subjects, he spent hours, almost daily, engaged in battle with reporters over the avalanche of stories about Young.”

Berg and city hall reporters raised their voices in discussions at times, but former reporters said Berg never let the anger in the moment affect how he dealt with people long term. “He never played reporters from the News against reporters from the Free Press,” McGraw said.

Larry Simmons, now pastor of Detroit’s Baber Memorial A.M.E Church, was Young’s top political aide and had a city hall office next to Berg’s. One day, after Simmons blew up in a room of Young appointees over unmet goals, Berg had some gentle advice. “I had been pretty abrasive. When we got back to the office, Bob said to me one of the things you may want to think about next time: ‘If you’re angry and it feels good, don’t do it.’ ’’

Berg, noted Simmons, had been “in really, really hot spots, but was unflappable.”

'That's Coleman's guy'

In early March, Berg shared his memories of Young, and the mayor’s accomplishments, with the Ecumenical Men’s Group at the Grosse Pointe War Memorial.

“Much of the progress we now see traces its origins to initiatives launched by Coleman Young,” Berg noted in his speech, citing the addition of riverfront parks, the integration of the city’s police department, and development deals that kept the Detroit Red Wings in the city and saw the construction of two modern auto factories. Young had a staff and department heads that were an equal mix of black and white people, Berg said.

“One of the great myths about Coleman Young is that he hated white people. I know from personal experience that is simply not true,” Berg said according to a draft of his speech. “I was white the entire time I worked for him, and I think I would have noticed.”

One moment in November 1997 illustrates how Berg was so strongly associated with Detroit’s trailblazing mayor. In the last days before Young’s death, Berg visited the Capuchin Friars offices at St. Bonaventure Monastery on Detroit’s east side. As he got out of his car, where people lined up for a meal at the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, Berg found himself surrounded by a crowd wondering about Young’s health. Someone in the crowd had recognized him and shouted out: “That’s Coleman’s guy.”

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Bob's tips

After Young’s tenure, Berg worked as a public relations and political consultant. In 1998, he partnered with Georgella Muirhead, also a onetime Young administration communications specialist, to form Berg Muirhead and Associates, considered Detroit’s first integrated public relations partnership. Berg’s clients ranged from The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island and Faygo Beverages to another controversial politician, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, whom Berg counseled during the scandals that eventually led to Kilpatrick’s current 28-year federal prison sentence for public corruption involving bribery, extortion and fraud.

“Bob was a mentor to me in every way possible,” said Peter Van Dyke, who, along with Marilyn Horn, bought Berg Muirhead and Associates from their longtime bosses in 2016. The firm is now called Van Dyke Horn, but Berg stayed on in an “of counsel” role and still came to work daily as recently as mid-April.

“He just had an ability — and when everybody saw it in action, it was impressive — to be so cool and collected and to be on the right side of everything,” said Van Dyke. Berg didn’t describe crisis control situations as awful or terrible, said Van Dyke, but resolutely described the facts and how to navigate through the situation.

“He was so humble and everything he did, he did for others,” said Van Dyke. “People don’t understand that he was the moral and communications compass.”

Berg’s top advice to his employees and to clients as they built their businesses — and before any trouble might surface — was to build authentic connections.

“Bob’s No. 1 tip: ‘When you need a friend, it’s too late to make one,’ ” Van Dyke recounted.

And because Berg was always dealing with career crises among clients, said Van Dyke, “Bob’s No. 2 tip: ‘This, too, shall pass.’’’

In 2014, racial justice organization New Detroit, Inc. presented Berg with its John Rakolta Jr. Leadership in Race Relations Award. Berg was honored in 2018 as a “Distinguished Warrior” by the Urban League.

Berg was proud of his involvement in guiding 18 Detroit Public School graduates, recipients of the prestigious Wade McCree Jr. Scholarship Program, to enroll at his alma mater, Illinois Wesleyan University. Berg would personally drive students the 800-mile round trip to Bloomington, Illinois,so they could visit the IWU campus. Each of the 18 Detroiters graduated from IWU in four years.

Berg grew up near Onarga and Cissna Park, Illinois, and worked on the student newspaper in college. He studied international relations at the University of Stockholm and landed a job at the United Press International (UPI) wire service bureau in Des Moines, Iowa. At his next post, he directed the UPI state capital bureau in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Michigan became his home beginning in 1971, after UPI dispatched him to Lansing to cover the Milliken administration and Michigan State University sports. In 1973, he became the State Capitol Bureau Chief for the Panax chain of statewide newspapers before joining the Milliken administration in 1977.

Berg is survived by his longtime partner, Wanda Brock; son, Erik; daughters, Melanie Berg and Lola Kristina Gibson-Berg; four grandchildren; a sister and a brother.

Funeral services for Bob Berg will take place in Michigan and Illinois.

A public visitation will be held from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. May 16 at Swanson Funeral Home, 14751 West McNichols Road in Detroit. A funeral will begin at 1 p.m. May 17 at Jefferson Avenue Presbyterian Church, 8625 E. Jefferson Avenue in Detroit.

A second funeral will be held at 6 p.m. May 20 at Cissna Park United Methodist Church, 221 W. Koplin Ave. in Cissna Park, Ill. Burial will be at Floral Hill Cemetery, 301 W. Main St. in Hoopeston, Ill.