Hall of Fame Nevada journalist Cy Ryan dies

Governors come and go, and every other year brings a new crop of Nevada legislators to Carson City.

And for more than 50 years, Cy Ryan greeted all of those political newcomers with pen in hand and questions at the ready.

Robert Dominic “Cy” Ryan, a veteran capitol reporter who may have covered more Nevada legislative sessions than any other Nevada reporter, died Thursday at home in Carson City under hospice care.

Ryan, 88, was a graduate of the University of Nevada’s journalism school and a member of the Nevada Press Association’s Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame. In a suitably no-nonsense biography on the hall’s web site, he is cited as “a hard-nosed reporter and workhorse.”

Ryan was born in California, attended high school in Sacramento and served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War. He began his career as a capitol reporter with United Press International in 1960. When UPI closed its Carson City office in 1990, Ryan became the Sun’s Capitol Bureau chief until retiring in 2017.

Sandra Chereb, who met Ryan while both worked in United Press International’s Reno bureau during the ’80s, remembers him as “a fierce competitor” who was always willing to help out new reporters.

“I was just a pup reporter when I first met him. He scared me to death,” said Chereb, who worked for the Review-Journal from 2015 to 2017. “Anyone who knew Cy knew Cy has a gruff exterior. But the more you got to know him, you learned he had a heart of gold. He was just a nice man who taught me so much.

“He was the guy who always blurted out the question everyone wanted to ask, but they didn’t have the guts to do it, and we all waited for Cy to ask it. He did not suffer fools. ”

Ryan would do whatever it took to get a story, former UPI colleague Chris Chrystal said. In 1987, when former governor and then-U.S. senator Paul Laxalt decided not to run for president, Laxalt escaped to his secluded Marlette Lake cabin near Lake Tahoe.

Ryan got in his truck, drove there, then “hiked the rest of the way to Laxalt’s cabin,” Chrystal said. “He hiked until he got to the door, and Laxalt let him in, and he interviewed Laxalt about why he wasn’t running.”

Then Ryan “hiked all the way back to his truck and drove all the way back to the capital to write his story.”

“Of course, nobody else was going to do that,” she said. “That was the kind of reporter Cy was.”

Former Gov. Robert List called Ryan “the dean of the press corps in Carson City. Everybody took his lead and looked up to him and respected him.

“He was a really good writer. He was accurate in what he put on paper. He was honest. And he really was objective,” List said. “He was a very hard-driving questioner and he did it with a rough style. He came right out with direct questions, and often with a tone of challenge. I think that’s one of the reasons he was so successful getting stories.”

But “underneath that gruff exterior, Cy was a thoughtful and kind guy. When I would see him or talk to him in those years or even after, in settings other than being grilled, he could not have been nicer.”

Ryan also “knew state government like the back of his hand and he had sources in every agency it seemed,” List said. “He loved the business of journalism. He was one of a kind.”

Former Nevada governor and U.S. senator Richard Bryan called Ryan “the epitome of an ethical, tough but fair journalist,” Bryan said. “Particularly if it was an issue that surfaced, you knew Cy was going to be on it, asking a lot of questions you probably didn’t want to answer.”

But, Bryan said, “I enjoyed his personality. When you weren’t talking about political issues or where you stood on a particular issue, Cy was a good guy to be around.”

Ryan married the former Linda Contreras in 1972. She served as Nevada’s welfare director, and died in 1999 at age 57 on a flight to Paris. The couple had no children, but Linda had a son from a previous marriage.

Services are pending.

Contact John Przybys at jprzybys@reviewjournal.com. Follow @JJPrzybys on Twitter. The Associated Press contributed to this report.