THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 30, 1996 TAG: 9606280250
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: Lane Degregory
LENGTH: 70 lines
MY FIRST assignment on the Outer Banks was to cover a Southern Shores Town Council meeting as The Virginian-Pilot's summer intern in 1989.
With the ink still drying on my diploma from the University of Virginia - and anxious to impress the first professionals I had ever worked with - I set out in a new navy suit and stockings carrying the briefcase my dad had just bought me for graduation. When I arrived in the airy town hall filled with shorts-clad retirees and tanned vacationers dressed in T-shirts, I knew I was out of place.
But I realized then that I was in a place I'd love to live.
Imagine, I thought, working for a big-city newspaper while living on a beautiful barrier island two hours from the congestion and crime. Imagine not having to wear panty hose to work - and even getting to go barefoot, sloshing through the surf while reporting some stories. Imagine landing a real, full-time job in such an idyllic place.
After stints in graduate school, a public relations department and a Charlottesville newspaper, I stopped imagining and went to work as a staff writer for The Virginian-Pilot, covering the Outer Banks. My plan was to stick around a year or so then move on. That was almost five years ago.
I hooked the job - then got hooked on being here.
I've gotten to climb the country's tallest brick beacon as Cape Hatteras Lighthouse re-opened for tours. I've soared over the site of the Wright Brothers' first flight in a World War II-era, open-air cockpit biplane. I've watched cowboys corral Corolla's wild horses to keep them out of the way of increasing traffic. I've hiked through the only ghost town east of the Mississippi River as National Park Service personnel began re-renting long-abandoned Portsmouth Island cottages. I've tagged a 250-pound bluefin tuna in the Gulf Stream.
There's no other area quite like the Outer Banks. No place has such a rich diversity of history, geography, plants, wildlife and people packed into such an isolated set of islands. There's no place like home.
This week I became editor of The Carolina Coast - just in time to help our weekly tabloid celebrate its 10th anniversary. I'll still be covering commercial and recreational fishing, tourism and traffic trends, National Park Service news, weather-related events and people profiles throughout the Albemarle area for our North Carolina edition. But about half my time now will be spent at my desk, editing and coordinating The Coast.
As original Carolina Coast editor Jeffrey Smith DeBlieu wrote 10 years ago, I'll continue striving to make this weekly ``become a mirror that reflects the community so well that through it we discover what we are in the process of becoming.'' I want The Coast to be a valuable resource for all readers - those that read us only on vacation, and those that read us every Sunday through the year.
We want to write about experiences, events and entertainment in a way that will delight and enlighten.
The Outer Banks have changed a lot in the half-decade I've dwelt here. I can't imagine the alterations this area will undergo by the turn of the century. And although we're on the streets, the beaches, the sounds and the sea almost every day, The Carolina Coast can't cover our community without knowing what you see through your windows to the world.
Write us letters. Call us. File a fax. Let us know what's going on. Share with us your concerns, and your successes. Tell us what you talk about over coffee, on the docks, in your shops.
Drop us a line at P.O. Box 10, Nags Head 27959. Call us at 441-1620. Fax us at 441-8895.
With the 21st century rushing at us, we need your help to spread the word in the next decade. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by DREW C. WILSON
This surfer was on a Coast cover in 1992
KEYWORDS: 10TH ANNIVERSARY by CNB