www.roanoke.com

John Long

Recent columns

• World keeps spinning
• Eyes wide open to terror threat
• English to campaign-ese
• Nothing short of victory

From the RoundTable blog

• Discuss Trejbal's column on video games in libraries
• Discuss Saturday's short takes
• Discuss Saturday's local commentary and letters
• Weekend open thread

This column is two weeks late. I hope an old newspaper man, who has moved on to bigger and better things, can forgive that.

The joke at the Salem Times-Register was that longtime publisher Ray Robinson died by design on a Tuesday, the day the local weekly is "put to bed" for Wednesday printing and Thursday distribution. That way, he knew he would make the front page without a week's delay or having to stop the presses.

But by the time I learned that Ray, a man I was privileged to call a friend, had passed on two weeks ago, I had already submitted my bi-weekly piece to The Roanoke Times. So as I write this, Ray's death is already old news. Still, I owe him a few words of tribute.

A lot of folks in Salem knew Ray better than I knew him, but I'll match my respect for him against anyone's. I met him 10 years ago when his paper (one of four he owned and published in the area) worked with my museum to publish a tabloid of historical articles about Salem. Ray was a big supporter of the museum (and untold other nonprofits) and had a keen sense of history. After all, he owned what is probably the oldest business in the valley. The Salem Times-Register has published continually since 1854 with only a brief interruption during the Civil War.

Through the years I ran into him frequently at restaurants, civic gatherings and book sales. We'd chat for a few minutes, but usually not for long because there were always other people he wanted to greet. He knew everyone in town, it seemed. At the funeral home, folks waited in line more than an hour to pay their respects.

My wife loved the man. Before we were married, she worked selling ad space for "Mr. R." The paper was a family, she recalls, and she loved working there.

I appreciated that throughout a long career in small town journalism, Ray concentrated on good news, on hometown happenings, on the 100-year-old woman or the grade school kid for whom having a picture in the paper was a big deal. He was a serious businessman who watched the bottom line, but Ray knew also what a hometown paper was all about. Folks don't turn to the local weekly to get the big stories. Those come from this paper, cable networks or internet sources. What's the latest on the federal bailout package? You wouldn't find that in Ray's papers.

But where else would you see that your granddaughter won the spelling bee? That a member of Rotary got a perfect attendance award? That the girls' track team at the middle school placed third at the state finals?

It's been said that modern journalism is too negative and sensationalistic. But then comes the rebuttal: The plane that lands safely is not newsworthy. Yet Ray (to overextend the analogy) had a way of reporting not only that the plane landed in one piece, but that the passengers had a great trip, the airline food was better than expected and the precocious kid across the aisle made some cute comment. And by the end of his coverage, you shared with him the wonders of modern aviation.

I didn't see him as much after he retired, and especially after he got sick. He was a smoker for years, I understand, and finally quit very publicly, with an announcement in his column. Nothing like 5,000 subscribers to hold you accountable to a no-nicotine pledge. But that didn't stop the lung cancer coming later.

Ray reported his illness, his treatments, his progress and the recurrence of the cancer with candor in his column. He raised money for cancer research, knowing it wouldn't save his life, but it might save another's. He accepted the inevitable admirably, determined to live his last days with joy and optimism.

His last book was a paperback of table graces he had collected through the years. Near the end he included his own favorite mealtime prayer which begins: "One of the true blessings of life is to be surrounded by good friends ..."

Ray had a lot of friends. I'm grateful to have been counted among them. Rest in peace, Mr. R. Reporting good news up there must be a lot easier than it was down here.

Long, director of the Salem Museum and a history teacher at Roanoke College, is a Roanoke Times columnist.