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Bob Dyer: Water, water nowhere, but one giant bill

Lisa Joyce has opened a lot of utility bills during the 24 years she has lived on her quiet street in Munroe Falls. But her eyes never grew wider than they did one day in January 2012.

Since joining the Akron Beacon Journal in 1984, Bob Dyer has served as a feature writer, a radio/TV writer and a general-interest columnist.

Dyer’s stories and columns have won 44 regional and national awards. In 2008, the National Society of Professional Journalists voted him Best Columnist in the Nation.

He has been named Best Columnist in Ohio by at least one professional journalism organization for five consecutive years.

In 2012, he was honored as the state’s top columnist by both the Associated Press and the Press Club of Cleveland. The AP gave him the same award in 2011, as did the Press Club in 2010.

In both 2009 and 2010, he was identified as the state’s best columnist by the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists.

A native of suburban Cleveland, Dyer also was one of the lead writers for A Question of Color, a yearlong examination of racial attitudes in Akron that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994.

In addition, he has written two books. One of them, Omar! My Life On and Off the Field, an autobiography co-written with Cleveland Indians baseball star Omar Vizquel, spent four weeks on the New York Times bestseller list in 2002, peaking at No. 27 among hardcover nonfiction.

His most recent book is The Top 20 Moments in Cleveland Sports.

Dyer is a graduate of West Geauga High School and The College of Wooster.