Tag: Journal
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Jousting with the Dictionary
The story of spelling whiz Josiah Wright, a home-schooler from Fleetwood, N.C., in Ashe County, was one of my very early video pieces, and despite its vast imperfections it is still one of my favorites. Josiah represented Northwest N.C. at the Scripps National Spelling bee in 2007. He made it to the finals, but was…
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Suicide on Campus
Two long months have passed and the door to the room where Paul Wilfong lived at the N.C. School of the Arts remains locked, the shades closed. On Thanksgiving night, Wilfong, 22, a fourth-year student in modern dance, turned down dinner invitations from friends, cleaned his room, made one last try at calling his mother…
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A Strict Protocol
With a blue-chip pedigree, Dr. William Frederick McGuirt Jr. used to be a respected member of the faculty at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Now, he is scheduled to go before the N.C. Medical Board on charges that he falsified research data for an industry-sponsored clinical trial – violating a fundamental tenet of…
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Faith Refocused
They are 15 women and five men, ranging in age from 25 to 61. They include a one-time businessman and a former schoolteacher, and represent a cross-section of Protestant denominations, from Baptist to Presbyterian to Moravian. They are the first graduating class in the School of Divinity at Wake Forest University. Few in this group…
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Making a Lake
Photographer Ted Richardson and I spent quite a few weekends one summer rambling around the Deep River, where the Randleman reservoir was about to be built. We met dairy farmers and homeowners, renters and swimmers and lifetime dam opponents, whose conflicting feelings about the dam we tried to capture in a radio story, photographs and…