Hendersonville – Small-town America occasionally gets big-time spotlights, as happened early in my 35.5-year journalism career that’s now winding down.
Many people primarily know me for covering a dozen local high schools in sports in recent years. I feel gratified to have covered many topics, including as the Tribune Papers‘ de-facto Hendersonville bureau reporter since the paper expanded to there 22 years ago this month.
Enjoyable topics include local government, community history, education, law enforcement, businesses, non-profits, churches, summer camps, festivals, and the arts. I earned state press awards for investigative reporting and feature writing.
‘Umbrella Assassin’
A sitting president has campaigned in Henderson County twice, and I covered it both times as a reporter and photographer. First was on Sept. 5, 1992. President George Herbert Walker Bush spoke then, on the steps of the Historic Henderson County Courthouse in Downtown Hendersonville during the Apple Festival. An estimated 10,000 people were on hand. I was four years into my career, with The Transylvania Times. Two years later, I’d return to Henderson County and stay.
I snapped photos from a crowded, elevated press stage. It was rainy. First Lady Barbara Bush held an umbrella. She stood to the president’s left. Suddenly, she turned to her left to speak with a lady and grinned. While turning, she accidentally dipped her umbrella right at Pres. Bush’s head!
President Bush grimaced while alertly ducking to avoid getting gouged by the umbrella’s metal tips. Click. I captured that precise moment.
Trump, Dukakis, Kennedy
Donald Trump also visited Henderson County while president. This was on Aug. 24, 2020, at Kirby Johnson’s Flavor 1st Growers and Packers in Mills River. Ivanka Trump caught my attention more. I also covered Trump’s hard-hitting speech on Sept. 12, 2016, when he would win election. As the Asheville civic center crowd left, I ran into Bryson City attorney David A. Sawyer. David was my treasurer, when I led the University of Michigan-Dearborn’s non-partisan student Political Awareness Club. Witty David was the state GOP’s vice-chairman in 2005-09. He chaired the GOP’s 11th U.S. District over a decade ago.
Democrat Michael Dukakis is the first presidential candidate I covered – in Asheville in 1988. Ronald Reagan was still president. I photographed candidate Reagan and former president Gerald Ford up close, as a college reporter in 1980 at a huge rally north of Detroit. In a short-cut, I dashed below college football bleachers and neared Ford before he departed.
Secret service agents started to draw guns at me. I stopped, smiled, and held up my instamatic camera. They let me get to within feet of Ford, and take a photo.
I have photographed both Kennedys who, in Democrat primaries, challenged incumbent presidents amidst high inflation and Iranian aggression. First was Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) in July 1979. I worked as a summer intern reporter in D.C. for my hometown Detroit News. Ted was up against Pres. Jimmy Carter. Ted posed for me, waving a cigar. When he declared his candidacy in ’79, it knocked my in-depth story on proposed nationwide gasoline rationing off the Detroit News‘s front page. I saw RFK Jr. campaign for his Uncle Ted in 1980. He’s running against Pres. Joe Biden.
Rick Wood ran for the State Senate in 2014. He’s a more moderate Democrat, among my honorable and eloquent friends. I miss bygone national bipartisan lawmaking. Education Hall of Famer Rick taught civics at West Henderson, coached boys’ basketball, and was school board vice-chairman until 2020. Rick carries on the Henderson County History Initiative that late historian Tom Orr launched.
U.S. Rep. James McClure “Jamie” Clarke, at age 71, tossed a long horseshoe “ringer” on his first try as I photographed him in Brevard’s Silvermont Park in 1988. Good omen for the Democrat. He won reelection one last time. Then Republican Charles Taylor won eight terms, followed by “Blue Dog” Democrat Heath Shuler’s three terms.
Somber 9/11 Tragedy
The saddest stories I’ve written have been about untimely deaths of teens. It felt extra somber when working on 9/11, our modern Pearl Harbor. Bill Moss, who runs the Hendersonville Lightning, was executive editor of the Hendersonville Times-News – for which I worked in 1994-2001. He called me to come in early to initiate 9/11 coverage. “Turn on the TV for five mintues, then come in,” he simply said after the second World Trade Center tower was struck by a jet. I got locals’ reaction to the sneak terrorism. Hal Cook, an elderly local tennis pro from here, and his son photographed a hijacked jet about to crash into the Pentagon.
I’ve interviewed U.S. vets from Pearl Harbor, a rare Bataan “death march” survivor; Korean, Vietnam and Iraq War vets, and even a dozen World War I veterans.
Manhunt for Bomber
I was close to another infamous bombing, and a manhunt for the man who did it. The bombing was in Atlanta’s Centennial Park during the Olympic Games, on July 27, 1996. I left the concert crowd and was walking mere blocks away when that bomb erupted, and I heard it.
Two years later, in 1998, I covered the extensive manhunt for suspect Eric Robert Rudolph. The FBI traced him to living in a ragged trailer near Murphy. The survivalist hid at two dynamite-trapped deep wood campsites, according to the new CBS series FBI True‘s episode on Dec. 5.
It was my once-monthly turn to work crime/emergencies on a Saturday, for the Times-News. The police scanner buzzed about the manhunt. I drove to Murphy, nearing the assigned media spot near the FBI command post. I asked directions from a tall, brunet man who had just emerged from a trail on the edge of the heavily-wooded Nantahala National Forest. No one else was around. The mystery man pointed me to the right way, then walked onto another park trail.
As I drove off, it sank in how he resembled Rudolph! If that was him, he averted suspicion by cooperating with me. Rudolph eluded pursuers that day, and for five more years until a Murphy policeman caught him on May 31, 2003. He remains imprisoned.
Such memories remain crisp and treasured.