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Bill Kirby Jr.
Bill Kirby Jr. is a veteran journalist who spent 49 years as a newspaper editor, reporter and columnist covering Fayetteville, Cumberland County and the Cape Fear Region for The Fayetteville Observer. He most recently has written for CityView Magazine.
Posted inThe Kirby File
Column: Let’s look beyond the Market House’s past and imagine its future
Here’s the truth of it: The Market House at the center of downtown Fayetteville already has been repurposed. No slave ever will be sold there again. No one, no matter the color of their skin. We as a community and a nation will not stand for that kind of conduct and discrimination.
Posted inThe Kirby File
Column: Paul Peel is a blessed man
When it comes to believing, Paul Peel needs not a single second to tell you the Lord has been his shepherd every day of his life. Not a single second, mind you. “Absolutely,” Peel, …
Posted inThe Kirby File
Column: Cape Fear Valley Health says thank you to state legislators
For state Rep. Marvin Lucas, Cape Fear Valley Medical Center has held a special place in his heart for more than 60 years. His mind wandered back to those days when the hospital was just a red brick …
Posted inThe Kirby File
Column: African-American community had a champion in Darvin Jones
Darvin Jones was a gentle man. He was quiet-spoken and unassuming, and yet so vital and significant when it came to the better health of the African-American community as the face and voice of the …
Posted inThe Kirby File
Column: Sentence for trooper’s killer is life without parole
Slowly and in a soft voice, Kevin Golphin would relive that September day when he and his older brother, Tilmon Golphin, would end the watch of a state Highway Patrol trooper and a Cumberland County sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop along Interstate 95.
Posted inThe Kirby File
Column: Al Lowry will never give up fight to keep brother’s killer behind bars
Al Lowry was like all of us on that bright and sunny afternoon of Sept. 23, 1997, when television and radio news reports were relaying the word that “officers were down” in a traffic stop …
Posted inThe Kirby File
Column: Patrolman’s widow relives Sept. 23, 1997, in killer’s bid for parole
This was heart-wrenching. This was painful to witness. And deeply emotional. “I have loved Edward since I was 16,” Dixie Lowry Davis, 70, was saying Monday as Judge Tom Locke was …
Posted inThe Kirby File
Column: Billy West takes us on a trip down Tobacco Road’s memory lane
Many of us know Billy West as the Cumberland County district attorney. He’s a sports fan, too. And quite the golfer, with eight Cumberland County Golf Championships in 1994, 1997, 2004, …
Posted inThe Kirby File
Column: City Council wants restored Market House to be a place of healing
Give a listen to a thoughtful city councilman. Antonio Jones said this so well. “If we’re really a community trying to heal and trying to work through some issue, I think we’re past the point of it being a controversy,” the freshman councilman was saying on March 28 as the council discussed the pros and cons of removing fencing around the Market House since the historic building was damaged by protesters on May 30, 2020.