So long to a mentor

I first set foot in Luray on Dec. 17, 1987. The only things I knew about the town were that it was the Page County seat (thanks to my Virginia government teacher Fran Atkinson) and that it was the home of Luray Caverns, which must have owned half of the billboards in Virginia.

I came to Luray to interview with John Waybright, the editor of the Page News and Courier. And man, I needed a full-time job. I had been at the Richmond Times-Dispatch for nearly two years, but it was only a part-time job, and despite the fact the people there liked me, I needed a little more seasoning. When a former Times-Dispatch part-timer who was working in Luray got a full-time gig on the sports desk in Richmond, it opened the door for me.

Luray is about 125 miles from Richmond, so I left plenty of time to get there in time for my interview. I killed a little time by going to the 7-Eleven on Main Street, where I got a Washington Post, a Daily News-Record (which I had never seen before) and a pack of Freshen-up Gum for a grand total of 97 cents and waited in my car until 1:55.

As I walked into the Page News and Courier office that afternoon, I had no idea what a big part of my life Luray, and in particular John Waybright, would become.

The interview went great, I passed a diabolical spelling test and an editing exercise, and I went back to Richmond to celebrate the holidays. Sometime before New Year’s Day, John called and offered me a job as a staff writer. The money was typically bad: $210 a week. But the value of the experience I gained in nine years at the Page News, the first eight with John at the helm, cannot be overstated.

John taught me to be fair, not play favorites in news coverage. He taught me to be flexible, to understand that news is ever changing as were the needs of the newspaper. But he also taught me to have fun in my chosen career, because if you were never going to become rich doing it, at least you could enjoy it.

John was the best boss you could hope for, running interference from the higher-ups, making sure to laud your successes. And going to his house to play board games was great entertainment when you were both poor and living in a small community. But it would have been fun anywhere.

He played a role in the careers of a whole lot of journalists who still ply their trades across Virginia and elsewhere in the East, although our ranks are thinning due to career changes and layoffs. But we all hold John and Luray dear in our hearts.

There are probably a million stories I’ll remember over the next few days, but having just heard this afternoon that he had passed away after years of declining health, I’ll tell this one:

John always saw us as being in competition with WLCC-FM, the local radio station, so I knew it would be a tough sale when one of my friends over there, John Natalie, wanted me to join him on local high school basketball and football games. But he also knew the value of cross-promotion long before it became the norm. So he said I could work for the radio station (and collect those $10 checks) as long as I was introduced as “Page News and Courier sports editor Charles Pannunzio.” As it turned out, that worked  both for the paper and the radio station as well, since that let people know I had a day job and added a little credence to my commentary.

I got to see John one last time when I was back in Virginia before Labor Day last year, and I told him it had been 25 years since we first met, and how much his help had meant to me ever since. He asked me if I was in town to get a haircut, since that was often a reason I visited Luray after 1997.

I’m glad I got to see him, and stay in touch over the years through the Internet and Facebook. I hope the people of Luray realize what a standard-bearer they lost today. And I hope they are still printing a paper in heaven.

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