The first thing he did was to address the obvious. The veteran newsman knew it would be a distraction to the viewers.

His head is bald, and though it looks distinguished, it's not a look he chose.

Bob Sevey, the man Hawai'i most trusted to deliver the evening news for 20 years, has cancer. Doctors gave him a year to live, but that was 13 months ago.

"Well, I figure I'm running on somebody else's time now for a whole month, and I feel fine," he says. "I've just renewed my subscription to Golf World Magazine, and I still buy green bananas."

Sevey, now 79, granted an interview to PBS Hawaii President and CEO Leslie Wilcox for her show "Long Story Short." She flew to Olympia, Wash., to talk with him in his home. The resulting conversation is warm, funny, at times wistful for the days before TV news got so weird.

Above all, it is honest. Sevey, still with his familiar, resonant voice, talks about chemotherapy, his wife's struggle with Alzheimer's, and the time he got so mad at newsroom management that he up and quit.

"Shall I tell you the story of Goo's Golden Tire Shop?" he says to Wilcox.

She already knows the story. It was the last straw that made him walk away from a lucrative contract and retire from television news in 1986.

"I think I was sitting behind you at the time this all happened," Wilcox tells him, "but please do."

You'll want to catch Wilcox's interview to hear Sevey tell this one. The Goo's Golden Tire Shop story is the kind of scene that has been written into every fictional drama about a news anchor saying "I'm fed up and I'm not going to take it anymore" — except with Sevey, it really happened, and he didn't throw a fit, didn't grouse on the air. The audience never knew how mad he was. The story says so much about what was important to him as a professional.

Sevey also talks about being fired from KGMB in the 1960s and of his brutal experience with local politics as press secretary for his friend Cec Heftel's high stakes run for governor. Heftel's 1986 campaign was famously decimated in the last days before the election by an epic smear effort. Sevey talks about all these things, the highs and lows of an amazing career, without hyperbole or self-importance.

There is probably no one else who could interview Sevey this way.

Wilcox worked with Sevey at KGMB in the 1980s. He hired her fresh from a newspaper reporting job without any broadcast experience, something that still amazes her. Her fondness for him doesn't get in the way of her questions, though. She asks tough ones, and you get that he'd be disappointed if she didn't, but always there is that tone of respect and admiration.

There is much to admire. Sevey had far and away the top-rated newscast in Hawai'i from the late 1960s through the mid-'80s. He was not only a news anchor, he was a newsroom manager who hired, mentored and inspired so many respected Hawai'i journalists, including Joe Moore, Tim Tindall, Gary Sprinkle, Kirk Matthews and Wilcox.

Early on, newspaper reporters in town pegged him as a heartthrob, comparing his looks to Lloyd Bridges and calling him a "journalistic sex symbol." But he proved his skills as a serious newsman, and that silly stuff fell away.

One of the ways he distinguished himself was to study up on the Apollo space program. He went to the Kennedy Space Center to report on the Apollo 9 and 10 missions. When Apollo 11 landed on the moon in July 1969, other Honolulu stations talked over Mainland feeds, but Sevey was live from mission control.

The overnight ratings for the moon landing coverage were enormous — a 91-share — unheard of in television ratings, even back then when there were only three channels.

In 1986, Sevey retired from KGMB and moved to Washington soon after. Though he has appeared in Hawai'i media from time to time, he managed that rare feat of retiring gracefully, leaving behind an image of his best days in broadcasting.

Sevey and Wilcox talk about the changed priorities in television news these days, and there is sadness as they describe what gets covered and what gets ignored. They both mourn the way news used to be a vital service to the community, when product mattered more than profit and weather was either the top story or the last 15 seconds of the newscast.

That sadness, though, is not carried over to Sevey's discussion of his illness and his mortality.

"Bob, you reported on many people's deaths and you wrote obituaries. How do you want yours to read?" Wilcox asks.

"Well, first of all, given what newspapers charge per word for obituaries," he pauses to chuckle, "these days I'd just as soon not have one."

"They have free ones, too," Wilcox says.

"Do they have free ones?" Sevey jokes. It's as though he is too modest to admit that anyone in Hawai'i would be interested enough in his life to mark his passing with a news story.

After all, he's used to reporting the news, not being the news. It's a hard habit to break.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.