Mark Washburn
Charlotte Observer
By Jill Santuccio
 
                        
Charlotte Observer columnist Mark Washburn kept the club in stitches with stories of his years as a "newspaper man." From his beginnings at a small weekly in West Virginia to supply lines in Iraq to covering hurricanes Andrew and Katrina, there were several funny stops, and, he added, he's "even played poker with Mac McCarley along the way."
 
While the editor of the Braxton Democrat in Sutton, West Virginia making $125 per week, he saw his first-ever dead body and helped extract it from the river where a car accident had occurred. In the melee of trying to get the body up an icy embankment, accidentally dropping the corpse in the middle of the road and a blinding snow storm, he lost his glasses. At 3 a.m. he arrived on the doorstep of the funeral director, who also helped get the body out of the water earlier, to retrieve his mangled glasses that had fallen onto the stretcher. The undertaker, who never spoke more than the occasional grunt, thanked Mark: for sparing him the work of straightening out the glasses and the embarrassment of putting them on the corpse the next morning.
 
Mark spent considerable time in Miami, Florida. He quipped that Florida is a state comprising "67 counties of really strange stuff" and a magnet for felons, but during his tenure there his team coverage of Hurricane Andrew garnered the 1992 Pulitzer Prize.
 
Known as the "master of disaster" throughout newsrooms across the country, he once interviewed a Hurricane Katrina victim who was so tall and skinny that "if you poured a cherry soda in him he could have been mistaken for a thermometer." In a thick Deep South drawl he proceeded to tell Mark that he survived the catastrophe following a sign from God: a seal (who had escaped from the local aquarium) had hopped up on the hood of his stranded Lincoln Town Car and "fixed his bulbous eye upon me."
 
It was during this tenure of helping out at the Biloxi, Miss. daily newspaper that the staff never missed a day of putting out a paper, often connecting a truck battery to a satellite phone to send stories to a newspaper press in a neighboring state. During the same time the New Orleans daily paper missed a week of publishing. "Our two papers shared the Pulitzer Prize that year, and I may get over that someday."
 
While assisting in the coverage of the floods in Grand Forks, North Dakota he wrote a feature story about a fourth-grader who in 1956 put a message in a bottle that surfaced in the rising waters in 1997. He telephoned the local community center attempting to find the modern-day Mary Johannsen, writer of the message. When the person at the community center answered the phone and was asked if she had ever heard of a Mary Johannsen, she replied "well her mother is sitting right here next to me, would you like to speak to her?" Washburn told the club he couldn't think of another line of work he could be in where "stuff like that really happens."
 
When asked about the future of newspapers, Mark commented that he trusted citizen journalism as much as he trusted citizen surgery. Like town criers before the advent of the printing press, newspapers were the historical precursors to the Internet. Smart newspapers that "stop complaining" and harness the true power of the digital age should be able to survive.
 
A final question to Mark about his view on reality television elicited comments such as "it's bad, really bad," "it's so bad that it's good," and "it's so bad you can't look away." And, he said, if reality television is bad, how does one stomach the upcoming "Real Housewives of New Jersey."
     
   
Head Table: Bob Webb, Chuck Woodyard, Mac McCarley, Lynn Wheeler, Cecily Durrett, Liz Irwin;
Invocation: Cindy Wolfe;

• President Mac asked all Veterans to stand and be recognized for their service to our country; Ed Ruff received an Honorary Degree from Belmont Abbey College for the hours of dedication and work done while serving on the Board of Directors; Ken Poe, president of Hankins Whittington Funeral Service, contributed to a story on songs he's heard played at funeral services; Doug Bean was on hand for the dedication of the new Environmental Services Facility. Char-Meck Utilities is the first Charlotte city government building to achieve the LEED certification; The Business Journal profiled Bill Loftin, Jr. & Sr. for their strategies in building a business. Three generations of the Loftin family have operated their printing company since 1898.
          
• Don Millen thanked members of the youth exchange team and introduced five outbound exchange students and their families. MC Bones (daughter of Charlie Bones), Hannah Tobin, Eric Melvin, Abbie Henderson and Sarah Fewell will be heading off to new adventures in Croatia, France, Spain, Germany and Belgium for the upcoming summer.
 
• A host family is needed for the female exchange student arriving in August from the Czech Republic. Contact Luther Moore if you could host between August and mid-November.
 
• Tony Zeiss thanked the membership committee for their hard work and provided the following update: 30 new members have been introduced; six more are approved and waiting to be introduced; three membership applications are in hand for processing. Contact the Rotary office if you need a membership application.
  
• John Stedman's daughter, Jacqueline Tillar Stedman, was a recipient of the Benjamin N. Duke Memorial Scholarship to attend Duke.

• Carolina Raptor Center invites you to GO WILD!, a benefit and reception planned for June 20 at the Bank of America Corporate Center Lobby. Visit www.carolinaraptorcenter.org. for tickets or additional information.

• Last chance to submit ROSTER UPDATES. Changes to your profile are due to the Rotary office not later than May 29th.