Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 6, 1993 TAG: 9305050225
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Beth Macy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It wasn't plastered across a chamber of commerce billboard. It wasn't even mentioned last week in this newspaper's "Peril and Promise" series.
But it had everything to do with the "vision thing" that people are talking about these days. It had to do with what it means to live in the Roanoke Valley in 1993, what it means to make tough choices.
And especially what it means when a city like Washington, D.C., with all its monuments, briefcases and high-thrills happenings, loses out to Roanoke:
To watching the sunset over Poor Mountain from the first-base line at a Salem Bucs game.
To redbuds, dogwoods and lilacs in the spring.
To singing harmony with friends.
To something as simple as an old, comfortable couch - the kind your butt sinks into like it's belonged there all along.
Two things they teach you not to do in journalism school: Write about your close friends. Write about other newspaper reporters.
So I'll admit this right off: I'm breaking both rules by writing about Mary Bishop. I'm breaking those rules because Mary's taught me something far more important than rules, something that few editors or journalism professors ever mention.
She's taught me how to see the world around me. Let me explain this kind of vision.
Actually, let me let Mary explain. She wrote this piece for a Hollins College alumni publication. I keep it on my office bulletin board because it describes - more articulately than I ever could - why we do what we do. It's called "My Blessings":
Waking up with the meadowlark and the bellowing bull as a kid. Starting out wallowing in dirt and blood and buzz and sap on a farm.
Having a pop - bit of an historian, bit of a storyteller, thoroughly a farmer - who got a kick out of all the sweet miserable mess of life (and in case he would leave me vulnerable) Having a mother who said (59,143 times at last count) Be careful.
Coming up in a Virginia tenant house on a rich man's 1940s mock plantation. Knowing how it feels to be devalued and scared. And then when I got away and got the picture, knowing how it feels to be free.
Peeking into homes and hearts in 24 years as a reporter, the impertinent intruder privileged to watch thousands of people in sorrow and jubilation and shock and disarray and occasionally at peace.
And after all that, seizing the power of language and my own peculiar choices of words and images to connect people with people, if only for an instant.
If I thought I could get away with it, I would write 10 columns about Mary Bishop. One would be about her service to journalism: the Pulitzer she shared on the Philadelphia Inquirer staff covering the Three Mile Island disaster; the award-winning (and legislation- changing) pesticide series she wrote for our paper a few years back. I could go on and on.
I could tell you about last Christmas Eve, when everybody else was trying to get out of the office and go home to their families. There was Mary, running all over Roanoke in her little Honda Civic, delivering Christmas gifts to some of the people she wrote about last year - the Southeast woman who runs the little sandwich shop, the Gainsboro woman who made her own pantsuits. I could go on and on here, too. This one would be about empathy; about the respect and heart she puts into her stories.
But this one's about Roanoke and why, I think, something great happened here recently:
An old editor friend of Mary's called her a few months ago. He wanted her to take a job at the Washington news bureau he runs - covering national aging issues, traveling across the country (and world, if she wanted), hobnobbing with hot-shot White House reporters in a city where exciting things happen to fascinating people.
Mary was so impressed by what she saw at the interview, she was tempted to leave Roanoke. She made a pros-and-cons list. I didn't see the actual list, but I can guess what was on it:
The pros spoke to D.C. - the promise of a better salary, of a better social life, more things to do, the thrill of supercompetitive journalism from the down-and-dirty thick.
The cons spoke to Roanoke - enough money to live comfortably in a wonderful house, really good friends (if we say so ourselves), less job stress, a 15-minute ride to some of the best mountain views anywhere.
Mary hemmed and hawed, and still couldn't decide. So she put the decision off and instead - in her typical way - buried herself in a story. She pulled a series of 12-hour work shifts, holed up in a windowless little room with just a computer, telephone and her notebooks.
Meantime outside, the tree-tips began to swell, the mountains slow-motioning to green. By the time Mary dug herself out of her story, it was springtime in Roanoke. The Bucs' season was starting. Friends were having parties. And the tulips - bless their sweet little red petals - were popping up all over Mary's back yard.
Mary started waxing over the dogwoods and redbuds, and going on long hikes in the woods.
When she ordered new upholstery for her old living-room couch, I knew we'd won:
Roanoke - 1; D.C. - 0.
Something really great happened to the Roanoke Valley a few weeks ago: Someone with 20/20 vision dug her roots down a little deeper.
I thought you should know.
Macy Beth Macy, a features department staff writer, sings alto to Mary Bishop's perfect-pitch soprano. Her column runs Thursdays.
by CNB