“Greg was a legendary reporter, a straight shooter who tackled every story with passion and got the truth in his reporting through the eyes of the people he interviewed.”
ABC11/WTVD-TV nightly anchor Steve Daniels remembered Greg Barnes, who died at age 73 on May 29 at his Lumberton home.
LUMBERTON — Greg Barnes was a television news reporter without peer for 36 years.
He was comfortable in front of the camera’s lens.
Greg Barnes was confident in the stories he told, most of them for 34 years with ABC11/WTVD-TV, and so many of the stories taking place in Fayetteville or the Carolina coast or on Fort Liberty when our soldiers came home from foreign soil.
“All the homecomings out at Fort Bragg (now Fort Liberty),” Barnes said in his final telecast in 2017 before retiring were among his favorites. “You cannot beat that, for the joy and love and tears of happiness. It just warms your heart to see these heroes march back into Fort Bragg (Fort Liberty), and there’s all their kids and families just cheering and screaming and having a good time.”
A soldier was home.
Greg Barnes, along with cameraman Fred Heggs Jr., was there.
His stories were not lost on military leaders.
“I do recall that he seemed always more aware of the individual soldier, and that soldier’s family, than of those senior leader soldiers who naturally drew press attention,” says Gen. (Ret.) Dan K. McNeill, former commander of the 82nd Airborne Division; the 18th Airborne Corps; U.S. Army Forces Command; the Coalition Forces, Afghanistan; and the U.S. Army Forces Command. “He had a passion for journalism for sure. But perhaps of greater significance, Greg Barnes had compassion for the soldiers and families about whom he exceptionally well reported on the who, what, when, why, where and how of the dynamic events of their respective lives.”
Yellow crime tape surrounded a home where a suspicious fire had blazed, and taken lives, or there was a victim of a homicide in a neighborhood. Or a 5-year-old child abducted in 2009 from her mobile home off Murchison Road.
Greg Barnes, along with cameraman Fred Heggs Jr., was there.
Winds whipped down Oak Island way, as a hurricane navigated its way to the coastal shores.
Greg Barnes, along with cameraman Fred Heggs Jr., was there.
He was the quintessential television news reporter.
“Greg, you have this very special ability that we absolutely love seeing you tap into the humanity and every story, and every story you touch,” Steve Daniels, the nightly ABC11/WTVD-TV anchor, said on Aug. 30, 2017, in Barnes farewell newscast from Hay Street. “You bring out that human emotion, and whenever there’s a call to action, we know if Greg Barnes is on the story we are going to achieve whatever goal that is. You are a remarkable journalist, and so you mean so much to us here at ABC11, and so much to that community.”
The parting was bittersweet, and Greg Barnes left us with a final thought.
“I just wanted to take a second and tell all our viewers and everybody out there I just thank you so much for the kind words, the kind messages about my retirement on Facebook and my email,” he said. “Through it all, I look back and I am just humbled, truly humbled by the trust that everybody has put in me and our team to bring the news every night, and that’s what is special. And I’m really appreciative of that the trust.”
Greg Barnes returned to his native Robeson County home, where he grew up the son of Dr. Oscar Lee Barnes and Daisy Hines Barnes, and where his journalism career began at age 15 as a newscaster for WAGR a.m. radio. A 1969 graduate of Lumberton High School, he later worked with radio stations in Laurinburg, Fairmont and WFLB in Fayetteville. Television news called in 1981, when Barnes joined WECT-TV in Wilmington as a nightly anchor, and in 1983 he signed on with what then was known as WTVD ABC11 Eyewitness News and opened the station’s Fayetteville news bureau downtown.
He could report the news with authority, conviction and self-assurance.
He was Greg Barnes, a familiar on-air personality dressed in the crisp, white shirt, necktie and his trademark boots. He was a newsman you could trust — the hallmark of a newsman — and Barnes set the journalism bar high for himself and for others.
‘This is really tough news for all of us’
Greg Lee Barnes died May 29.
He was 73.
“This is really tough news for all of us in the Eyewitness News family,” Steve Daniels was back on the air a day later. “Greg passed away at his home in Lumberton. He was surrounded by his family. Greg was a legendary reporter, a straight shooter who tackled every story with passion and got the truth in his reporting through the eyes of the people he interviewed. Greg had a very special way of taking us into the stories he reported from our Fayetteville newsroom over the years.
“Greg’s favorite stories involved Fort Bragg soldiers in the 82nd Airborne Division. He was there with them during their foreign deployments, and he especially loved covering our soldiers when they returned home.
“Greg was always one of the first reporters we sent to the coast because of his outstanding hurricane coverage,” Daniels said. “He referred to himself as the ‘Bullseye Strike Team’ covering hurricanes taking us all into the heart of the storm.”
The last farewell
News colleagues present and past including Fred Heggs Jr. and Akilah Davis came Saturday to the Floyd Mortuary & Crematory chapel to celebrate and remember one of their own. Heggs was the photojournalist behind the camera’s eye alongside Barnes for 20 of Heggs’ 22 years with ABC11/WTVD-TV headquartered in Durham. Davis succeeded Barnes at the Fayetteville news bureau.
“I first met him in 1977 when he was interviewing troops in Kuwait, and I knew he was a great storyteller,” Heggs, 69, said Saturday before a 3 p.m. service at Kingdom Place Church. “Greg loved doing the deployments and the homecomings. He liked the emotions of when the soldiers would come home. He’d say, ‘Get this, Fred. Get that, Fred.’ Greg was a perfectionist.”
Heggs was with Barnes and family members in the final moments of Greg Barnes’ life.
“I put my hand on his head and prayed,” Heggs said. “It was almost as if he was waiting for me to get there. I felt a sense of great loss, not only for myself, but his viewers. I’ve seen Greg pray for so many families from traffic injuries to shootings.”
Robert Wilkins grew up with Barnes.
“He held Bible studies in his house,” Wilkins, 72, said. “He was very devout in his literature. He was a man of faith. And he was an old-time journalist.”
Epilogue
There were embraces and whispers of condolence in a widow’s ear Saturday along with memories of what Greg Barnes meant to them along his life’s way and distinguished television reporting career from foreign lands to Green Ramp on the military base to the cobblestones of Hay Street to the coastal shores of a storm’s wrath in our path.
There were parting smiles and tears of memories past.
“And I can tell you,” Lynne Barnes said of her 53 years of marriage, “he was as great a father, grandfather and husband.”
And the quintessential television news reporter … Greg Barnes, ABC11/WTVD-TV.
Bill Kirby Jr. can be reached at billkirby49@gmail.com or 910-624-1961We’re in our third year of CityView Today, and so many of you have been with us from day one in our efforts to bring the news of the city, county, community and Cape Fear region each day. We’re here with a purpose — to deliver the news that matters to you. To sustain CityView Today’s reporting, we cannot do it without you, and hope you will become members of our team by giving your support. Click here to join.
