Tag: Kerry Sipe

You May Find This Odd

Kerry Sipe was a good newspaperman even when he was a student at working on the school paper at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but I fired him anyway.

Kerry Sipe,
Kerry Sipe

He was night editor of The Daily Tar Heel. I was the managing editor, his boss, and he ignored my instructions.

One of our columnists had put a racist “joke” in his column meaning, he told me, to make fun the University of Mississippi.  Maybe so, but he missed badly and we had to fix it, or try to.

I required the columnist to write an apology and told Kerry to put the apology in the column exactly where the “joke” had run. But he didn’t do that, he moved the apology to the top of the column. In retrospect, Kerry was right about that but I couldn’t let a subordinate jerk me around.

After I graduated in 1966 I went to work for The Charlotte News and he went to work for The News & Observer in Raleigh.

Now here’s the thing you may find odd:

I told The News about Kerry, and recommended him, and they tried, unsuccessfully, to hire him – twice.

And he told The N&O about me and urged me to apply. They hired me and I stayed at The N&O for 37 years.

Postscript: Kerry left The N&O in the early 1980’s and worked the last 25 years of his career at The Virginian-Pilot.  Here’s what his colleagues said about him when he retired on Dec. 31, 2008.

Coming Monday: My Father’s Finest Hour

River Music

When I turned around I saw Brother Dave in the water, holding on to the back of a canoe, walking two guys down the Chattooga River, I screamed at him, trying to make myself heard above the rapids, “Let ’em go!” Dave could easily have turned — or broken — an ankle and I had had just about enough.

Joe Terrell, the guy who invited me on my first trip down the Chattooga, told me his theory: He said if you get 12 or 15 guys together on a white water trip — I don’t care how well you know them, I don’t care if all of them are relatives, he said — one of them will be a nut.

I organized three canoe trips on the Chattooga and I discovered that he was right about that. This time the odd man out was in a canoe with Kerry Sipe, a good man on the river and a newspaper friend of mine since college.

The Narrows
The Narrows

The night before, when we were camping at Earl’s Ford, Kerry’s partner had talked about how he’d like to repel down the rock walls of The Narrows, several miles downstream from our camp. He talked a good game but a few minutes before I yelled at Dave that guy had been holding on to a tree limb sticking out from the bank, refusing to paddle to a ledge where he and Kerry could portage, avoiding the falls on either side.

When he had finally let go and their canoe headed downstream he had jumped out as they approached a rapid, causing the canoe to tip, fill with water, and pin Kerry against a boulder. One of Kerry’s legs was mashed. Dave had lifted the canoe off of him and was walking them and their canoe to a sandbar.

When they reached the sandbar, and their canoe was out of the water, the boy said: “When I heard Kerry scream it was music to my ears because I knew this trip was over for me.”

Kerry, back at camp with his mashed leg propped up.
Kerry Sipe, back at camp with his mashed leg propped up.

Postscript: Kerry’s leg was turning blue and purple so we built a fire and left him there with food and water. His partner was supposed to go for help, and he did. On dry land, that boy was all right. When we got back to our camp that night, there they were, both of them.

Coming Friday: The One Room Shack