Clackety, clackety, clack. The Associated Press wire was spitting out national, international and statewide stories one after another in this tiny newsroom with the old oak outside keeping vigil in anticipation of a morning newspaper.
Tom English Jr., the 31-year-old managing editor, was holding an afternoon news budget meeting with copy desk chief Harry Abernathy and state and local editors Bill Scarborough, Jack Timme and John Pittman, features editor Dot Sparrow and sports editor Add Penfield Jr.
Larry Cheek, 37, was putting the finishing touches on what would become his daily column, the face and voice of the fledgling newspaper.
“Nervous?” Penfield, 33, puffing away on one Pall Mall cigarette after another, would write in his sports column. “You bet.”
Two weeks of trial runs were done.
This was it, and somewhere just past midnight, The Fayetteville Times would be rolling off the old Goss printing press for delivery to newsstands in Fayetteville and the Cape Fear region, yellow newspaper boxes, doorsteps and front yards from here to Bladen, Columbus, Harnett, Hoke, Lee, Moore, Robeson, Scotland and Sampson counties.
“A large group gathered in the press room to watch the first edition of The Fayetteville Times roll off of the press,” Ramon Yarborough, then the 40-year-old publisher, says about this day 50 years ago. “Their families and friends. I was very excited to see history in the making.”
A photograph of a white peace lily by a young Johnny Horne adorned the newspaper’s front page on July 2, 1973.
“Roy Parker, Tom English and Larry Cheek were hired to lead this new newspaper for our readers,” Yarborough, now 90, says with a fondness. “The Fayetteville Times was an immediate success.”
We were young.
We were hungry for the news.
We were ambitious, with deadlines to meet, photographs to take and stories to tell.
We were Penny Muse, Ann Ebeling, John Prince, Tommy Horton, Perry Jenifer, Brian Stokes, Nancy Szokan, Luke West, John Pittman, Dennis Rogers, Bill Scarborough, Jack Timme, Kitty Leach, Dot Sparrow, Eve Oakley, Dennis Patterson, Johnny Horne, Bill Kirby Jr., Ken Cooke, Steve Aldridge, Abernathy, Penfield, Cheek, Parker and English.
“How fortunate we were to have Tom English Jr. believe in us,” Penny Muse Abernathy, assistant to editor Roy Parker Jr., once said, “and help us soar.”
While Bernstein and Woodward were chasing Watergate and a U.S. president, we found ourselves in that cramped newsroom with the faux wood paneling and The Associated Press wire clacking incessantly, and coming to know one another, this community and you.
The downtown was thriving with the nearby Hotel Prince Charles, Belk-Hensdale and John Hensdale welcoming his customers; Joel and Marcia Schur running The Capitol with the Birdcage restaurant on the second floor; Maurice Fleishman and Bob Spicer at Fleishman’s clothing store; Leon and Mickey Sugar at Sugar’s men’s clothiers; Bill and Urbana Crawley’s Carolina Soda Shop; Cleo’s Café; and movie theaters to include the Colony, Carolina and Miracle.
And not to forget the nightlife from Rick’s Lounge to the Seven Dwarfs to the Oasis Lounge to the Korean Lounge to the Town Pump, and the ladies of the evening strutting Hay Street in their mini-skirts and stiletto spiked heels.
“Hey, baby,” was their clarion cry on a military payday Friday night. “Wanna date?”
This was downtown Fayetteville in the summer of 1973. It was who and what this city was, and on July 2, 1973, The Fayetteville Times morning newspaper would become part of Fayetteville Publishing Co. and its long-established Fayetteville Observer, the oldest newspaper in the state, circa 1816, with a curmudgeon of an investigative reporter named Pat Reese.
Today, we remember
Ramon Yarborough drifts back in his mind’s eye.
“Owners of The Fayetteville Observer printed an afternoon newspaper for many years,” Yarborough says. “This was a time when readers looked forward to reading the newspaper when they got home from work, sitting on their front porches catching up on what happened while they were at work. Over time, work schedules changed. With high-speed presses, the reporters and editors were able to give their readers updates.”
Ashton Lilly, owner and chairwoman of the publishing company’s board of directors, gave careful consideration to what a morning newspaper could mean to a community.
“After a great deal of discussion,” Yarborough says, the board, including Virginia Lilly Yarborough, Charlotte Lilly Broadwell, Dohn Broadwell and Ramon Yarborough, would concur that a morning newspaper and an afternoon newspaper could co-exist and complement one another.
“This meant the owners were competing with their own newspapers,” Yarborough says. “There was an air of excitement and concern from the employees. Our readers were both morning and afternoon readers.”
This state’s youngest newspaper would take its place along with this state’s oldest newspaper, and just after midnight on July 2, 1973, the old Goss printing press under Bill Owen’s direction would spin The Fayetteville Times by the thousands to this community and the Cape Fear region.
“I think Mrs. Lilly was very happy as well as everyone else,” Yarborough says about his late mother-in-law. “I was not nervous, because I knew we had a very capable staff. If we had any doubts about this project, we would not have proceeded.”
John Malzone, who would become a prominent downtown businessman and city ambassador, recalls The Fayetteville Times from its origin.
“I still have a copy of the first edition,” Malzone says. “It was a good paper and a brilliant move. It was the sign of growth and into the future. It was a precursor to 24-hour news. It was exciting. It was 10 years before the Dogwood Festival, and the International Folk Festival hadn’t started. It was a big thing in the community.”
Who and the way we were
A newspaper printing press runs fast and hard and loud, as fast and hard and loud as the freight trains running that July 2, 1973, morning adjacent to the old newspaper press room.
Charles Broadwell, grandson of Ashton Lilly, was just 7 years old. A black-and-white photograph shows him with his eyes wide open when seeing the first edition of the morning newspaper. He later would become publisher and editor of the Observer-Times and The Fayetteville Observer.
Johnny Horne recalls the first edition.
“I was really proud when a picture of mine of a roadside lily at sunset in front of the PWC waste treatment plant on Eastern Boulevard ran on 1A of the Times’ first edition,” says Horne, the first photographer hired at age 19 for the morning newspaper and who later would become chief photographer at the publishing company. “I had worked part time for the Observer since the spring of 1972 while I was a photo student at then-Randolph Technical Institute in Asheboro. One Friday when I drove to work from school, I was told that the company would start a morning paper. I soon had to head up to Raleigh on a Sunday morning to be interviewed by Ken Cooke at the N&O. Roy Parker had already been hired by him, but he hadn’t started yet. He told me that day I had the job.”
Roy Parker Jr. was the first Times hire after serving as an associate editor for The Fayetteville Observer under Charlie Clay. He was a die-hard Democrat with plans to leave the newspaper to become press secretary for Hargrove “Skipper” Bowles, who appeared to be a shoo-in to defeat Jim Holshouser for governor in 1972.
Tom English Jr. would come from Florence, South Carolina, where he had been managing editor of the Florence Morning News. Larry Cheek had worked as in investigative reporter and bureau chief in Washington, D.C. Luke West was a Nieman Fellow out of Harvard University with investigative expertise. Ken Cooke had worked for 20 years under longtime chief photographer Lawrence Wofford at The News & Observer in Raleigh.
From Fayetteville to the Big Apple
“The journalistic values, passions and priorities of Roy and Tom complemented one another perfectly and melded The Fayetteville Times into an innovative newspaper that aspired to provide the people of Fayetteville and the 10-county Cape Fear region with a daily collection of stories that helped them make wise, everyday decisions, while nurturing a collective sense of belonging to the larger community,” says Penny Muse Abernathy, Parker’s editorial assistant.
Abernathy would become the most distinguished Times alumnus, going on to work at The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Knight chair in journalism and digital media economics at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“As editor and author of the editorials that appeared in the paper,” Abernathy says about Parker, who died at age 83 on April 3, 2013, “Roy was both historian and insightful prognosticator, constantly poring over books, reports and government statistics to offer readers valuable context about a news event or interview. He was also the most visible face of the paper, out every day searching for stories and story ideas. Back in the office, he was a lightning-fast, two-fingered typist, banging out dozens of stories and story ideas, which he generously shared with every writer on staff. On some days, at least half of the stories published in the paper seemed to have originated with Roy.”
And, she says, there was Tom English Jr.
“As managing editor, Tom was the behind-the-scenes maestro who orchestrated the coming together of a daily newspaper,” Abernathy says. “Like all good conductors, he knew the strengths of each member of the orchestra and managed to blend our individual contributions into a single, harmonious composition of news, sports, features and eye-catching photos. He encouraged innovation in the news and sports coverage of people and institutions in the Cape Fear region, in layout and design, and in the reimagining of the traditional women’s section into a national award-winning features section three years running.”
“I’m indebted to Roy for giving me my first big job out of college as his editorial assistant,” Abernathy says, “and to Tom, who gave me my first big break in the business, promoting and supporting me wholeheartedly as features editor.”
‘Honey, you just gotta read Larry Cheek’
But it was Larry Cheek who became the talk of the town. Down-to-earth and homespun, his column was the first read by subscribers having their morning eggs and bacon, toast and jam, and coffee.
“Hey, honey,” readers would say, “you just gotta read Larry Cheek.”
And if your name appeared under his column sig, you were somebody in the community.
“That paper was extremely important to Larry,” says Suzan Cheek, widow of Larry Cheek, who retired from the newspaper in 2000 and died at age 85 on Sept. 30, 2021, near the boyhood dairy farm where he grew up outside Chapel Hill and his beloved University of North Carolina. “The launch of a brand new, major newspaper is a once-in-a-lifetime event. As a career journalist, that’s how Larry saw The Fayetteville Times. There was no question that Larry would say yes to the invitation to join the team. Publisher Ramon Yarborough and editor Roy Parker brought together distinguished senior journalists and a firecracker group of newly minted best and brightest fledgling young ones.
“Larry already had fond memories of Fayetteville when he came in 1973. Much of his earlier summer National Guard duty was served at then-Fort Bragg. He had enjoyed the recent lore and active nightlife of the 500 block of Hay Street, a legacy of the Vietnam War era.
“It’s important to say that Larry had no idea what he was going to be doing on the newspaper,” Mrs. Cheek says. “He just wanted in. The first day of the paper, to his delight, the sign on his desk said ‘Larry Cheek, columnist.’ In each person, Larry could find a unique trait or an attention-grabbing experience or wisdom or mother wit. And these individuals became his columns. He dedicated his joy in being in Fayetteville and having one of the best 140 jobs in the United States to his thousands of readers.”
After his retirement, Larry Cheek never wrote another column.
And then there were the rest of us.
“It’s hard to believe 50 years have passed since the first edition of The Fayetteville Times rolled off the presses,” says Harry Abernathy, the pipe-smoking copy desk chief. “I was 25 back then, grateful that Tom English had offered me a good job on a brand-new daily newspaper and eager to begin what turned out to be the ‘maddest, gladdest, damnedest existence ever enjoyed by mortal youth,’” as H.L. Mencken once wrote. “That surely describes that day in mid-June 1973 when the entire Times staff showed up to prepare for the launch of the new paper. And pretty much every day thereafter. It was a bold move by the Lilly family to sink a bunch of money in this new morning paper, and by Roy Parker and Tom English to sign on to head such a noble experiment. I think we got over the ‘experiment’ stage pretty soon, and the Times became a familiar and welcome part of the surrounding community. I haven’t seen anything quite as exciting or been privileged to work for better people since.”
Abernathy married Penny Muse Abernathy and left newspapers behind to become an Episcopal priest.
“I can remember it like it happened yesterday,” says Tommy Horton, who joined the Times sports staff after working as a sportswriter for the Memphis Press-Scimitar newspaper in his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. “I will never forget that moment, and I will not forget the five years that I worked for this remarkable newspaper. How many people get to be part of starting a new morning newspaper? A lot of amazing talent on that staff. I was 27 years old back then and thought I knew something about the newspaper business. I eventually worked for newspapers in Greensboro, Jackson, Mississippi, and Memphis again. Nothing compared with the totally unique experience of working in Fayetteville. This summer I will turn 77, and I am trying to figure out where the time has gone. My thoughts are with you guys and some of the most memorable times I ever experienced in the newspaper business.”
Johnny Horne remembers Ken Cooke as larger than life.
Cooke had a contagious personality.
“He talked Ramon into sending me to Australia for two weeks in 1986 to cover the once-every-76-year return of Halley’s Comet under the dark skies of the Australian Outback,” Horne says. “He also first mentioned the prospect of my writing my monthly Backyard Universe column, which has run since 1989.
“I’d go up to Raleigh to see him about once a month during his last couple of years. He would tell the same stories I had heard since the ’70s and tell them as only Ken could. During the 17 years I ran the photo department, I drew on his experience as far as hiring people.”
Cooke retired from the newspaper in 1994. He died at age 88 on Oct. 29, 2020, at his Raleigh home.
‘Rising young stars’
The morning and afternoon newspapers would move in 1977 to Whitfield Street, and both newspapers would merge in 1990. Today, the KBA offset printing press is shuttered, and the newsroom, we hear, operates out of a business condominium behind Highland Centre, seven years after the Lilly family’s sale of the newspaper to Gatehouse Media.
But once upon a time, there was The Fayetteville Times that came to life with the old oak tree outside the newsroom keeping vigil.
“It was an accomplishment that few people are allowed to achieve,” says English, 81 and living in Greensboro. “Ramon gave us the reins of the paper, and we ran with it successfully. I set goals of hiring rising young stars, and we did that, and it showed in the product. There were a lot of them. That was the goal, to build it from the ground up, and we were allowed to do that. We just had free rein from the publisher on down, and without that free rein we could not have achieved what we did. I was able to hire a good staff with no holds barred, basically. I’m very proud of what we achieved, and in a short period of time, we just started right off winning awards left and right. It was just no question about what we were able to accomplish as a result of Ramon Yarborough giving us free rein. It was simply just hiring rising young stars, and that’s what we set out to do. And that’s what we did.”
Once, we were young.
We were Muse, Ebeling, Prince, Horton, Jenifer, Stokes, Szokan, West, Pittman, Rogers, Scarborough, Timme, Leach, Sparrow, Oakley, Patterson, Horne, Cooke, Aldridge, Abernathy, Penfield, Cheek Parker, and a once cub reporter named Billy Kirby Jr. who would remain with the company 49 years as the last of The Fayetteville Times, Class of ’73.
We, with our bylines and photo credit lines and column sigs, may have been the glitter.
But Tom English Jr. was the glue, and the wind beneath our wings, who brought us within an eyelash of a prestigious Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in the early 1980s.
Epilogue
“Here’s to the Times,” Penny Muse Abernathy says on this golden anniversary of the way we were and what we would become, “and all the inspired and inspiring journalists who created something very special.”
Bill Kirby Jr. can be reached at billkirby49@gmail.com or 910-624-1961.
