ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 24, 1997 TAG: 9704240012
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
Other radio newscasters were known for their "rip and read" style, but not Frosty Landon.
Once, a cynical sports editor referred to Forrest M. Landon as "golden tonsils" - which was kind of a compliment, because Landon at the time was in the broadcast news business.
This observation was possible because at that time, WDBJ television and radio were in the same building as The Roanoke Times and The World-News, and Landon had to pass through the third-story newsroom and the sports department as part of his duties.
Those who were there said the full quote was: "Here comes old golden tonsils."
Television and radio were Landon's original career, but the years went by, and Landon - known, not always affectionately, as "Frosty" - ended up in the print business and retired in the fall of 1995 as executive editor of The Roanoke Times.
Now, in his mid-60s, he is director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government - an organization devoted to improving the public's understanding of and access to state and local government proceedings and records.
Tonight, at a black-tie event at the venerable, remodeled Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Landon will become a member of the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame.
He joins retired Times political writer Melville Carico in the hall of fame.
Old-timers who remember Landon when he was in the broadcast business recall a sturdy Cronkite-like delivery coming from a short, aggressive kid from upstate New York - his tonsils in pretty good shape.
If you had been listening to WDBJ radio in the fall of 1960, you would have heard a serious, maybe a little nervous, Landon describing the landing of a plane carrying Jack Kennedy, the Democratic candidate for president, on a visit to Roanoke.
It went something like this: "And now the plane is taxiing up to the apron, and we are waiting for the door to open and....''
It would never rate with radio coverage of the Hindenburg disaster, but it was well done. And locally exceptional in its own time.
In 1955, when he was 22 and just out of the University of Missouri's journalism school, Landon hired on with WDBJ-TV, then locally owned by Times-World Corp. He arrived the same day the station went on the air.
From television, Landon went to WDBJ radio as director of the news department - at a time when most radio newscasters were known as "rip-and-read" people, for their way of reading Associated Press copy directly from the teletype machine.
Landon, from a small room not far from the sports department, didn't do it like that. Election coverage was live, and Landon talked of "bellwether precincts." It was obvious that politics and government obsessed him.
When Floyd County High School was integrated in the 1960s, school officials wouldn't let print or broadcast reporters interview black students, inside or outside the school.
Landon and a print reporter tailed a school bus and interviewed a black student in her home. No ripping and reading that day.
Landon moved to the print side when he became an editorial writer for the now-defunct afternoon World-News. Landon then became editor of the Times editorial page. For a while.
The assignment was cut short by the death of former Gov. Thomas B. Stanley, who had wavered considerably when the state was faced with the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision demanding public-school integration.
When Stanley died, Landon wrote a highly critical evaluation of the former governor. It ran the day of the funeral.
Politicians then a part of a still lively Democratic Byrd organization went wild. So did the newspapers' publisher.
Out of the editorial business, Landon had several assignments - moving on to night managing editor, managing editor, and, finally, executive editor.
The change from broadcast journalism was not bothersome for Landon. When he was 10 years old in Sidney, N.Y., he created, composed, reported for and sold ads for the mimeographed Sidney Flash - which he also peddled on the street.
It should be said that newspaper executives usually don't have widely used nicknames - at least they aren't supposed to know about them - but Landon was, and is, "Frosty" to everybody.
He favors clip-on bow ties, suspenders and goes hatless most of the time. Recently, he visited the paper on a windy day looking just as a boy from upstate New York should. He wore a sport coat and a scarf, thrown carelessly around his neck.
And the tonsils are still in pretty good shape.
LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: THE ROANOKE TIMES FILE 1995. Forrest "Frosty" Landon,by CNBshown on his last day as executive editor of The Roanoke Times,
Sept. 29, 1995, made a successful transition from broadcast to print
journalism, and now is director of the Virginia Coalition for Open
Government. color.