DATE: Sunday, August 24, 1997               TAG: 9708240109

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: PAUL SOUTH

                                            LENGTH:   72 lines

HONESTY, COMPASSION, GRACE - AND MASON PETERS

The world is a less graceful, less gallant place today because Mason Peters is no longer with us.

Faithful readers of The Virginian-Pilot know that Mason, who spent 65 years in the newspaper business, passed away last week. He was 82.

Those of us who can count it as one of life's great privileges to have known him have our own memories stored away.

And at least one Virginian-Pilot alum, Margaret Talev, has a tangible reminder of Mason Peters.

Margaret, during her last semester at the University of Maryland, was assigned a Coast cover story in recognition of Mason's 80th birthday. While doing it, she was faced with an ethical dilemma.

``We spent the day together,'' she recalled during a phone conversation last week. ``We were walking along, and I saw these earrings. He insisted on buying them for me. I told him, `Mason, I can't do that. I'm doing a story on you.' ''

Mason's reply: ``Oh, shut up, darling.''

Margaret took the earrings. And she wrote a fair, objective, great story.

``He had so much to tell,'' Talev said. ``There was just so much he had done. I learned so much from him that summer.''

Indeed, he lived a full life. As a managing editor at The Washington Times-Herald, he hired young Jacqueline Bouvier, the future Mrs. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, as the paper's ``inquiring photographer.''

He, too, toiled in the community news business, at the Outer Banks Current, The Daily Advance in Elizabeth City and of course, for The Virginian-Pilot.

He was comfortable strolling in the corridors of power. Congressmen, senators, jurists and governors are among the many who mourn his passing.

But if you had the chance to lunch with Mason at some of his favorite Elizabeth City hangouts - B.J.'s or The Colonial Restaurant - you found out in a hurry that Mason Peters knew darn near everyone, or at least it looked as though he did.

He worked the room like a veteran politician on the stump, pumping hands, flirting with the ladies. No one, be they waitress or janitor or lawyer or retiree, escaped his endearments.

``And how are you today, my dear,'' he would say to a nearby lady. Or ``How in the world are you, old friend?'' he would ask, and mean it from his heart.

That ability to embrace people with kindness, along with a matchless understanding of the power of words and a massive memory, helped make Mason Peters one of the best reporters I will ever know.

He practiced his craft using the fundamentals of the art - accuracy, fairness and the ability to make people trust him, even in the hardest of times.

There were no throwaway stories for Mason Peters, nor throwaway people. He could write about major politicians or missing pets with equal passion and equal grace.

Our former editor, Ron Speer, hit it on the head when he said Mason Peters was as colorful a character as the folks he covered. Though I did not work with him on a daily basis, there is one story I will tell my grandchildren some day about our beloved friend.

In November 1994, Mason and I had been assigned together to interview the two combatants in a hotly contested political race.

First, to the loser, Mason asked ``How'd you lose to that so-and-so?'' The defeated candidate, his eyes circled by no sleep on his night of disappointment, broke into a broad grin. It was probably his first smile of the day.

Later, at another Greenville hotel, Mason asked the winner the same question, ``How'd you beat that so-and-so?''

He, too, laughed out loud.

Both candidates, Martin Lancaster and Walter Jones Jr., gave great, freewheeling interviews.

In looking back, it wasn't just the question that made the words come forth so openly. It was the pure and simple fact that those two men trusted, loved and respected Mason Peters.

So did we.

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