At 91, Howard Bryan smoked cigarettes, ate junk food and hadn't seen a doctor since he got out of the Army 65 years ago.

Then, about four months ago, he found he couldn't breathe through his left nostril, so he consulted a physician and was told he had an inoperable tumor in his nose and had no more than two months to live.

Last Thursday, Bryan's friends did not expect him to make it through the week. Then, Ollie Reed Jr., a friend for 35 years, called him to ask a question for a story he was writing. Bryan rallied and spent Thursday with Reed, lucidly discussing the great books about New Mexico.

On Sunday, he died at his residence in Albuquerque.

"A month or two ago, he told me that a lot of people who are dying talk about wanting to meet their maker," Reed said. "He said he wanted to meet Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett."

Howard Thornton Bryan Jr. was born in Delaware, Ohio, on March 25, 1920, to Howard Bryan Sr., who had an electrical repair shop and wrote a history column called "Know Your Ohio" for the Delaware Gazette, and Alice Bryan, a pianist from whom the young Bryan got his appreciation of music.

After graduating from Delaware High School in 1938, Bryan attended Ohio State University, but he admitted he spent more time reading about history at the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society library than studying for his classes.

After two years, college officials told Bryan not to return, so he joined the Army and was inducted the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He served in the Signal Service Battalion as a code operator in New Guinea and Australia, and finished World War II as a staff sergeant.

Back in the U.S., Bryan worked as a copy boy and then as a police reporter for the Cleveland Press for two years. In 1948, he took a train to Albuquerque for a vacation and liked what he saw.

"People were walking around town wearing cowboy hats and boots," he recalled in an interview last year. "So I went to the Albuquerque Tribune to see if they needed any reporters. I met with Dan Burrows, the editor at the time, and he said, 'To tell you the truth, I'm kind of desperate and could use a reporter right now.' I started work the next day and never did finish that vacation."

In New Mexico, Bryan covered the federal court, police and the state fair, but he soon began to focus on his adopted state's history. One of his first subjects was Elfego Baca, a deputy sheriff and gunfighter in Socorro who later practiced law in Albuquerque. Baca had died only three years before Bryan arrived in New Mexico, so he relied on interviews with people who had known Baca.

In 1953, Bryan began to write a history column, "Off the Beaten Path," which he continued to write for the Tribune even after his formal retirement in 1985. He's the author of seven books:

• Tours for All Seasons, 1972.

• Wildest of the Wild West: True Tales of a Frontier Town on the Santa Fe Trail, 1986.

• Robbers, Rogues and Ruffians: True Tales of the Wild West, 1991.

• Incredible Elfego Baca: Good Man, Bad Man of the Old West, 1993, winner of the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America in 1994. He also received the Governor's Award for Excellence and Achievement in the Arts that year.

• True Tales of the American Southwest: Pioneer Reflections of Frontier Adventures, 1998.

• Albuquerque Remembered, 2006.

• Santa Fe Tales & More, 2009, winner of last year's Mayor's Award for Excellence in Preservation at the Santa Fe Heritage Preservation Awards.

Marcia Keegan, whose Clear Light Publishers published five of Bryan's books, said Bryan became her mentor and helped her find her life's career.

"When I was a sophomore in college, I didn't have any direction," she said, "and my father arranged for me to work at the Tribune for a summer, and I luckily sat next to Howard, because he changed my life completely. If I had sat next to somebody else, I don't know if I would have gone back to college and majored in journalism. And then he helped me get a degree."

Keegan said Bryan was a fabulous writer whose memory was so sharp that he could interview someone without taking notes or using a tape recorder, but still get their quotes verbatim.

Bryan lived in Albuquerque's Old Town during the 1960s and '70s, and was known for the Christmas parties he would host there, attended by newspaper people, artists and writers. He had lived in an apartment in the Northeast Heights in recent years.

His library of Western books, along with photographs and research materials, has been donated to the Fray Angélico Chávez History Library in Santa Fe.

Bryan was married briefly but leaves behind no children. His survivors include his brothers David and wife Linda of Columbus, Ohio, and William and wife Barbara of Hilton Head, S.C.; niece Mary Pat Spillane and husband Tim of St. Louis; and nephews Michael Bryan and wife Kinley of Atlanta, John Bryan and wife Martha of Novelty, Ohio, and Peter Bryan and wife Amber of Dayton, Ohio; and eight great-nephews.

Burial will be 9 a.m. Friday at the Santa Fe National Cemetery. A celebration of Bryan's life is planned for 1 p.m. Sept. 24 at the Albuquerque Press Club, 201 Highland Park Circle SE.

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.