A Hundred Year-Old Writers' Group

Comrades-in-arts are crucial for writers, painters, and others working in fields that are often solitary and speculative. (I think I've said this a time or two before on this blog.)

Friday night I took part in A BANG-UP CELEBRATION of writer (and editor and photographer, etc.) SOLIDARITY that was so unusual--and terrific--that it drew a television crew, news reporters and people from New York to Florida.

The party was a gathering of "alums" of the now-defunct Raleigh Times. The invited guests included anyone who had ever worked for this little afternoon newspaper that was started just over a hundred years ago. The host was Greg Hatem, owner of the Raleigh Times Bar soon to open in the 1906 building that first housed the newspaper. The picture at the top of this post shows in the background the staff in the mid-70s.


This was not the first such gathering of Timesers--I've been to three other reunions. This is a bunch of people who have stayed in touch, stayed buddies even at a distance, and over so many years, so many decades.

I worked at this paper in 1970-1972--quite a while ago. The paper has been closed since '89. And yet, dozens of us still gather every few years. For any kind of enterprise, this is some unusual solidarity.

This tight connection came about because we were such a scrappy little newspaper. There were probably no more than 8 or 10 reporters in the newsroom at a time, and we competed daily against the magnitudes-larger News & Observer.

The work was intense. My beat was health, science, the environment and education, and that was the year the schools here desegregated. Busy? Whoa, baby!

When I first interviewed for the job, the managing editor Joe Harper asked if I was comfortable writing up to five stories a day; I assured him I was, though I doubt if I ever had done any such thing. We wrote for two deadlines, 9:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Then we went to lunch together. Supposedly, we were off work at three.

The group was typically young and single. So people partied together, romanced, shared apartments, as well as working together.

Now those of us who worked there are bonded. Permanently. Sort of like we were underdogs together in the same battle.

And people have turned out pretty well so far: among those attending were a reporter from the St. Petersburg paper, an art gallery owner, several successful freelancers, an antiques dealer, a couple of painters, a journalism professor, a media consultant, the editor of The Durham Herald-Sun and the publisher of The New York Times. Those who had to miss this time include: an editor at The Washington Post, and the just-retired head of a university journalism school.

Karen Tam, a photographer, staged her slide show of "how-we-were" in the '70's--always a hilarious and poignant event at these reunions. The media consultant and I were an item in one of those "hippie" years; there he was in dashiki in one of the old pictures, with me in my pink velour bell bottoms.

A regular highlight of the slide show: a guy who is now a reporter for the News & Observer was literally caught with his pants down on some unnamed social occasion; it was a moment he will never be allowed to forget.

Also portrayed were various members of the gang: climbing a tree, playing at the beach, working in the newsroom, making faces, showing off a new baby, etc. That baby is an adult now. The rest of us are adults-and-then-some.

As you see, I tried shooting a few pictures at Friday's party. They didn't turn out very well. All the people are much more fetching than these pix would indicate. (I held back the real howlers, maybe they'll be in the next slide show.) New camera, low light, fit of shyness, dying batteries, and good conversations got in the way. But here are a few of them. If you happened to be at that party and have better ones, email me (ppayne51@cs.com) and I'll post those.

Again, let me say: it's a great thing to have such friends.