In her 20 years as a Roanoke Times writer Donna Alvis-Banks has never feared writing a corny story or flatfooting at an office party or even calling into question her high school principal-turned-Christiansburg-mayor when she caught town officials skirting open meetings laws.

And even if she was sometimes afraid to call a family that had just lost six of their nine children in a gas explosion or one of their children to a gunman, she picked up the phone anyway and then wrote their stories with grace and humanity.

Today she will leave the newspaper's Christiansburg office -- probably at her usual 5:30 p.m. -- having given away the collection of stuffed gorillas that surround her desk and cleaned out several years' worth of notes taken in loopy cursive on yellow legal pads.

Following several other mainstay journalists at the newspaper, she has decided to retire.

"It was a hard decision," she said.

"The past couple of years our newsroom has gone through a pretty big transition period," Managing Editor Michael Stowe said. "Losing Donna, Paul [Dellinger] and Gene [Dalton] in the past year, it's tough."

Alvis-Banks plans sometime soon to go on a 10-day bicycling trip with her husband, Rick. She's not sure what she'll do when she gets back, besides give her house a good cleaning. She also hopes to continue contributing stories to the paper as a freelance writer.

Corn and Myra Maines

To tell Alvis-Banks' story, you must first talk about corn. It's integral to her personality. Fueled by Nicorette gum and cheap coffee that cooks all day in a pot in the newsroom, Alvis-Banks has churned out her share of what can only be described as corny prose.

"Only those of us who have experienced the joy of home perms, panty hose, Midol and underarm razor burn can truly appreciate Larke, Kilkelly and Witt," Alvis-Banks wrote in 1992 about a play being performed at Virginia Tech.

From a 1996 "Out and About" column: "Herbs and music, music and herbs! That's the ticket Saturday at Springfest, a full day of musical entertainment, herbal crafts, gardening seminars and tasty herbal foods and drink."

Her talent for corn doesn't stop there, however. It extends to practical jokes.

There was the April Fools' Day in 2002. Being new to the Christiansburg office, I didn't yet know to be suspicious of my cubicle mate.

The sticky note on my computer screen had said I should call a Blacksburg number and ask for Myra Maines. I called it twice. The second time, the man had been kind, despite the slight irritation in his voice.

"I think somebody's playing a joke on you," he said with something like pity. "This is a funeral home."

I hung up. I sounded out the name again. "Myra Maines. My. Ra. Maines. My remains!"

By that time, Alvis-Banks was doubled over laughing, wiping away mirthful tears.

Her dream job

A Christiansburg native and a fugitive from high school teaching, Alvis-Banks started out at The Roanoke Times in 1988 as an editorial assistant compiling calendar listings, answering phones and combing through land transfers in county courthouses. She remained in what many consider the grunt job of the newsroom for 15 years before then-New River Valley Editor Stowe promoted her to features writer.

She nearly fainted when he told her.

"It's what I've always wanted," she said at the time.

For days after, she felt queasy, wondering if she was up to doing her dream job. She needn't have worried. She was already doing some of her best work. One of the editorial assistant jobs at the time was writing "Sunday obits." Each week one of us would pick someone out of the death notices, call his or her family and friends and write the person's life story.

One week Alvis-Banks found a familiar name: Roger Cooper. She remembered him from high school, but only vaguely. He had been somewhat of an outcast. The death notice said there would be no funeral. Something about that got to Alvis-Banks.

She tracked down Cooper's last address. It was in a rough part of town, so I went with her. After some searching, we found Cooper's roommate, David Baldwin. We sat on Baldwin's rumpled bed because there were no chairs in the tiny room. The mattress Cooper had slept on lay nearby in a corner of the kitchen floor.

For more than an hour, Alvis-Banks transcribed Baldwin's grief and the memories of his closest friend. Back at the office, she wrote: "At the old Christiansburg High School, Cooper was a shadow. His picture appeared in the yearbook only once. He never joined clubs, participated in team sports or put on a cap and gown. One day, he was just gone."

There would be no funeral, but Cooper would have an honest, poignant eulogy.

"The greatest compliment I could give Donna is that I wish I could write like Donna," Stowe said. "She has a writing voice that's so distinct and conversational that it just draws you into her stories.

"But the backbone of that is being able to relate to people," he added. "She's curious and compassionate about people and their lives, and she really wants to know and tell their stories."

"She has empathy, wisdom and just a sincere way of communicating and talking with people that I've never experienced with any other reporter in 25 years of journalism," said veteran Times photographer Matt Gentry.

A lot of co-workers' stories about Alvis-Banks begin with "I'll never forget ..." For Gentry it was, "I'll never forget that day down at the river with Donna."

In June 2005, Roger Dale Scarberry had been fishing in the Parrott section of the New River when he stepped into a deep hole in the riverbed and never resurfaced.

"Drownings are always difficult because of the hopelessness of the situation," Gentry said. Family members and neighbors were gathered there, some in shock. But Alvis-Banks "was just able to bridge the gap with everyone there," he said. "It was the way she interacted with people and told that story. She almost made it a positive experience."

'She's so real'

In her career, Alvis-Banks has done some of the hardest stories to be printed in this newspaper.

After news broke that the Bryant family of Giles County had lost six of their nine children in a Michigan gas explosion on Labor Day 2005, Alvis-Banks was on the phone, making contacts and writing. For weeks and months after, she followed the family, visiting their home, following them to church. She wrote about the first birthdays and the first Christmas they spent without their lost children.

And then, on April 3, 2007, Alvis-Banks stood outside the delivery room in a Roanoke hospital when Joyce Bryant gave birth to her 10th child, Markita Joelle, named after her father, Mark. Later, Alvis-Banks held that baby and then wrote a story about renewal. Covering the Bryants was a lesson in faith, Alvis-Banks said this week during a late-night interview at her kitchen table.

The tragedy "made me mad. How can they just accept this? But they did. Their faith was strong, but mine was weak. I wish I could be like a lot of the people I've interviewed," she said.

Two weeks later, she would have to put her own faith to work.

"Time stopped in Blacksburg Monday," Alvis-Banks wrote on April 16, 2007, the day Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and then himself on the Virginia Tech campus.

Two things stand out in her memory about covering the Tech shootings, Alvis-Banks said. "One, how remarkable the students were in handling it, and the way the community worked together -- the police and everyone. Also, the hatred I felt as a reporter, how we were all grouped together. I hated the way that made me feel."

On April 27, 2007, after 11 days of constant work and little sleep, she came to my desk. "I need to see the memorials," she said. "Will you go with me?"

Alvis-Banks later wrote about that day and a bouquet of roses we found at Tech's War Memorial Chapel where we had gone to pray. A card tucked into the flowers read: "32 roses for 32 lives. I promise I will never forget. Mark."

Alvis-Banks wrote: "God," I pleaded. "How can I accept this? How can I honor these innocent lives?"

"Suddenly, I realized that the answer to my prayer came from someone I didn't know. I promise, too, Mark. May we all never forget."

In the aftermath of this tragedy, Alvis-Banks became something of an ambassador for those of us who covered the Tech tragedy. She's traveled to Iowa to talk to journalism students about the best ways to cover trauma and its victims.

She spent a week in Baltimore as an Ochberg Fellow at the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. There she spoke to war correspondents from the country's biggest and best newspapers and psychiatrists and academics from the across the world about our community's experience of April 16. And Donna Alvis-Banks, who started out writing poetry in an apple tree as a little girl, wowed this elite group.

"She's so real," said Dr. Frank Ochberg of the DART Center for Journalism and Trauma, for whom the fellowship is named. "When someone like Donna comes along, she's a morale booster for everybody else. I would say she's as good as it gets."

The work that Alvis-Banks has done for two decades and that journalists in this and other communities do every day makes us all better, according to Ochberg, the psychiatrist who wrote the diagnosis for post-traumatic stress disorder.

As he puts it, if journalists can tell the stories of tragedy and trauma "in a way that is not too melodramatic and not too trivial and not too entertaining, but just right, then maybe, maybe we human beings can get a handle on our aggression and violence."

Of writing about the New River Valley's traumas and triumphs, Alvis-Banks says simply: "It was just my way of helping."