THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 25, 1994 TAG: 9412250047
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Long : 223 lines
We in the newspaper business spend most of our time giving you stories about what others are doing. Reporters ask the questions, carrying pens and notebooks to take down some answers. Editors sit before computer screens, reading about events around town or around the globe.
``What's happening out there?'' we ask.
But this special day calls for special giving. And so, some of us at The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star decided to put aside our usual tools - at least for a few minutes - and share some personal memories which touched our hearts. Perhaps, they will touch yours, too.
``You all do good work,'' my father, a man of few compliments, proudly told his daughters.
He was cuddling Isaiah, his youngest grandson and my nephew, born just three weeks earlier. An uncommon gentleness had washed over him. Today, Christmas Day of 1993, his soft eyes seemed to record the scene:
Two-year-old William, his older grandson, scurrying back and forth from under the Christmas tree with gifts in hand, delivering them to family members with an exaggerated flourish.
My mother, gaily reading off the gift tags as she handed William packages.
My two sisters, lounging on the living room floor as they laughed at William's eagerness.
Cortne, the imperious granddaughter, suspiciously studying the motorized pink Barbie car her grandfather had labored so hard to assemble for her.
Isaiah, resting calmly in his grandfather's arms with a rare beatific smile.
Me, sitting close by, unwrapping his gifts and worrying if he was tiring or in pain. I was concentrating so closely on his frail body that the miracle of that day nearly escaped me.
For a man who had eschewed sentiment most of his life was giving me the one gift I had always wanted, but had not been ready to receive: Affirmation of his love for me and my sisters and the paths our lives had taken.
Three weeks later, my father would die of cancer.
But his un-self-conscious celebration of family on his last Christmas will always live on.
JOYCE INGRAM
Deputy managing editor
Don't be subtle when you're planning gift-giving for me. I just don't get it, and never have.
Christmas 1976. The first present I unwrap is a set of three ping-pong balls. I smile politely, and thank my sister. But see, we don't have a ping-pong table. Tom is slightly befuddled. (Dear reader: Have you figured it out yet?)
Next gift: a set of two ping-pong paddles. I forget to thank my brother; I'm way too confused.
Four more siblings, four more ping-pong related accoutrements (a nifty hat, more balls, a net, more paddles). Tom is bewitched. The siblings are playing it straight, not saying a peep.
Finally, Mom tells me to go to the basement. There, set off by itself, illuminated perfectly by an overhead light, is a ping-pong table. I dash upstairs, and announce to the family:
``Somebody got a ping-pong table, and it's right downstairs!''
TOM WARHOVER
Public Life Team leader
Cowboys in the Sand Hills of Nebraska where I grew up didn't show much emotion. My dad, a rancher who could rope and ride with the best in the west, always seemed to me to be as macho as the rest of the cattlemen who reluctantly accepted the coming of civilization.
He was gentle with us kids, but he wasn't a hugger, and he never told me he loved me.
I left home at 17, when I graduated from Hay Springs High School in 1951, and rode with Uncle Russell to Los Angeles, where I worked in an airplane factory at night and went to college in the daytime. The abrupt change of lifestyles was stunning to a teenager who never before had been away from home and family.
Six months later, I was still terribly homesick. So after fall classes were dismissed for the holiday, I quit my job and hitchhiked home, a bitterly cold journey that took four days and brought me to our ranch the day before Christmas. I hadn't told my folks I was coming, and Dad was working on a saddle in the barn when I walked up and said hello.
He looked up, startled, and started to cry. Then, tears trickling down his wind-burnt cheeks, he hugged me. I hugged him back.
RONALD L. SPEER
North Carolina editor
PATRICK LACKEY
Reporter
One Christmas I received an Erector set. I hadn't requested it, and I barely knew what to do with it, but at least it was a toy.
My brother, Mike, two years older, received clothes.
We had never thought of clothes as presents. New clothes, we figured, were what you got when you grew two inches or tore the old ones on a barbed-wire fence.
This was in Kansas long ago, back when children were still too smart to care about brand names and dressing sharp.
Mike stared at his new clothes, wondering what to do with them, while I began to play with my Erector set. It was special to me because I got a toy and Mike didn't, and because I saw the day coming when I'd get shirts and pants and socks instead of toys.
I was following my mother through Roses department store when I saw her.
She was bright purple and sleek, with a small padded seat. The handlebar grips melded into my 6-year-old hands perfectly. The metal bars had a slick newness.
She was the ultimate riding machine - Miss Buzz Bike.
I told my mother how much I wanted a new bike. I had outgrown my old purple tricycle and I was ready to ride a two-wheeler - with the big girls in our small, black, middle-class subdivision in Durham, N.C.
``That's all I want,'' I said persistently. My mother smiled and pulled me along, as I took one last wishful look.
About a week before Christmas, my mother took me to Roses again to buy more last-minute items. I immediately pulled her to the toy section where I wandered through aisle after aisle.
I looked at every bicycle in the display. No Miss Buzz Bike. No Miss Buzz Bike.
I went home, sullen and dejected.
I woke up late Christmas Day. My mother came to my room to tell me that Santa Claus had left lots of presents for me and my baby sister.
In the living room, under the artificial Christmas tree, sat a gleaming Miss Buzz Bike. And after two months of coaching from my parents, I rode it with the big girls.
ANGELITA PLEMMER
Reporter
The best Christmas gift I ever received also was the simplest: a piece of paper, a change in my life. Yet it will last forever.
In 1987, Karen and I went to Florida for Christmas. We both grew up there, and our parents still live there.
We went to a party thrown by some friends, who had brought us together years before. They are, shall we say, uninhibited. During the party, someone said, ``I know! Why don't you two get married? Wouldn't it be something to have the party end with a wedding?!''
The idea took hold. There actually was a minister at the party. All our friends were there. Why not?
Then someone, probably the minister, pointed out a crucial little detail: We needed a license.
We talked it over, we talked to the parents. Our friends volunteered to provide their house, a cake, gifts, a videocamera. It was an instant wedding, just add bride and groom. Karen even had a dress she had just picked up from her mother's house. (OK, yes, that's mildly suspicious. But it was a coincidence. Really.)
So we did it. We picked up the license, we went back to our friends' house, and on the evening of Jan. 4, 1988, we were married. It is one of my sweetest memories: the little townhouse jammed with people; a borrowed suit and too-tight shoes; cake on our noses; and, as I kissed Karen, a four-year-old boy saying, ``That's enough, guys!''
TONY WHARTON
Reporter
My favorite Christmas present was a boxed set of children's books, The Borrowers series, about a tiny English race inhabiting cupboards and crawl spaces that ``borrows'' its necessities from oblivious human neighbors.
I received the gift in my mid-20s.
Sharon remembered that I had mentioned the stories as childhood favorites during a cascade of memories shared, I suppose, in hopes of explaining to her who and why I was.
Now, some 15 years later, we are married and surrounded by bookshelves. We have lost enough spools, watches and buttons to sustain a dozen Borrowers, but we have never misplaced the books. They're snug between our latest copies of The Chronicles of Narnia and the complete canon of Winnie the Pooh.
COLE C. CAMPBELL
Editor
Some people are easily surprised, others require major-league planning. Marcy, my bride of 10 years, ranks among the toughest.
A few days before Christmas 1982 I found myself aboard a Greyhound bound for Columbus, Ohio.
Marcy and I had been dating, mostly long distance, since June 1981 and we were anxiously awaiting this reunion. Little did she know what gift I had in store.
The best bet was the dress she had eyed so longingly over Thanksgiving. It was a country blue quilted fabric that laced down the front.
She unwrapped it Christmas Eve. Afterward, we ventured out to view the holiday sights. We hit all the usual stops but none seemed quite right. Finally, I pulled into the convention center, the only building still open Christmas Eve.
Marcy thought it odd and tried to talk me out of stopping.
I insisted.
We made our way into the cavernous lobby and snuggled up near the multi-story windows overlooking the city. A janitor was working his mop across the floor. He was the lone witness to the best Christmas gift Marcy or I ever received.
I reached my arms around her from behind, pulled her tight, and unfolded my hand to reveal the real gift I had in mind.
``Will you marry me?'' I asked.
The words weren't as much a surprise as the diamond. A few moments later she offered me my gift: ``Yes.''
KEVIN ARMSTRONG
Virginia Beach Beacon editor
Thirteen years ago, I received the best Christmas gift ever. 1981 was a chart-topping year in stressdom - an isolating military move hundreds of miles from family and friends, a demanding preschooler and a failing marriage. Just when life could not look any worse, clinical depression and adult orthodontia claimed me.
Seeking inner peace, I went to the base chapel for Sunday services. A warm and smiling woman named Mavis greeted me. After chapel, Mavis made it her mission to get to know me. She invited me to a women's group Christmas pot-luck that Friday night. With great effort, I forced myself to go.
When Mavis saw me, she ran over, hugged me and said, ``I have something for you.'' She handed me a box of Fannie Mae candy, smiled and said, ``These are especially for you. No nuts or chews to break your braces, and no chocolate to interfere with your medication.''
In her hug and through the white box of candy came the gift I needed most: Love, acceptance, and the compassion of an angel heralding, ``I hear your need.''
DIANA L. DIEHL
Staff librarian ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY BETH BERGMAN/Staff
by CNB