Robert (Bob) Dambach, retired director of television for Prairie Public, died on January 21 surrounded by his loving family.
“This is a profound loss for Bob’s friends at Prairie Public and our viewers,” said Prairie Public CEO John Harris. “We will always remember Bob’s insistence on high quality, his ability to raise enthusiasm for projects, and his ‘Last Annual Holiday Parties’ where he played Santa.”
Bob began his broadcasting career as a graduate student at the University of Iowa, where he worked on Hawkeye football broadcasts and on the production crew for the Phil Donahue Show.
After earning an M.A. degree in radio, TV and film, Bob was program director for KMUW Wichita, and in 1979 he was named the first program director for KNPR, Las Vegas. There, he met and married Virginia Carman Mulloy, who was the station’s development director. In 1985 Bob and Virginia moved with their baby daughter to accept positions at Prairie Public in Fargo, North Dakota.
Bob produced dozens of award-winning documentaries, most notably nine documentaries about the Germans from Russia—an enduring ethnic group in North Dakota.
When he became an insulin-dependent diabetic in 1996, Bob turned his illness into an opportunity to educate and assist others with health issues with his “Healthworks” documentaries and well-researched web resources that garnered the highest web use, at that time, in Prairie Public’s history. His relationship with Buck Paulson led to the production of 20 seasons of “Painting with Paulson.”
Bob became a driving force behind hundreds of successful TV pledge drives at Prairie Public, which inadvertently led to a generation of children who could recite the pledge phone number on demand. Bob initiated the Kid Zone Literacy Project and frequently recruited his daughters Mary Rita (1983) and Jeanne Louise (1987), to volunteer as props during pledge drives and extras for original productions.
Bob retired in 2018 and his health kept him from the world travel that he so enjoyed in his younger years. He leaves a multitude of friends, dozens of colleagues— and current and former Prairie Public producers, directors, editors, and videographers who carry on Bob’s legacy of broadcast excellence in radio, television, and film nationwide.