Frances Stebbins
Columnist
I had my cake
{This is a chapter of a Memoir, “Give Light” of the six decades Frances Stebbins has spent writing about faith communities in daily, weekly and monthly news publications covering the western third of Virginia.}
I never expected to spend my career writing about religion, but a strange finding from my college days at the Richmond Professional Institute remains with me still. In a test to help us students determine our future work interest, I scored highest on Religion. It was followed by the Social Sciences –psychology and sociology –and in third place one of the Arts. Natural sciences and Business were low in my interest. In this computer age, unfortunately, they remain so although my daughter’s career in the banking field has helped me value its vast array of services related to people.
It was not, I suppose, surprising, for I come from generations of clergy and teachers, some of whom also became successful writers.
But, on my arrival at the Roanoke World-News desk on the third floor, Church News was the field to which I was assigned. Husband Charlie, lifelong dedicated newsman that he was, traveled daily across Campbell Avenue to the big Municipal Building which housed courts and police station.
I was to spend three years at my desk at the newsroom entrance near the telephone switchboard, a spot never quiet except perhaps for the hours from about 3 to 5 a.m., for in 1953 the Times-World Corporation dating from 1886 published both an evening and a morning paper. We reporters were encouraged to compete for stories to help offset possible criticism from the reading public that with only one newspaper in town a variety of opinions was not available.
The city’s pioneer radio station, WDBJ, also was owned by the newspaper corporation; at noon daily the radio news reporter, Don Murray, stopped by the City Desk to announce for his mid-day broadcast. Soon after we arrived, the radio was joined by WDBJ-TV.
In the spring of 1956 our managing editor, W.C. Stouffer, from his office in the sunny corner of the newsroom unknowingly determined my career for the next half-century.
Six months pregnant with the child who would become our daughter, Julia Cary, on July 4, I entered the office with a certain embarrassment. I had to tell this rather crusty man of few words that I would be leaving at the end of the month. Although some women out of necessity or in relatively private spaces worked up to the time of birth, representing the newspaper out in public –especially among the sanctified clergy –was deemed inappropriate. I really didn’t want to go.; my loss of income would affect our limited finances especially with a mortgage and a baby on the way.
I said what I had to. Mr. Stouffer peered at me over his glasses, reflected briefly and said: “How would you like to keep doing your work from home? Charlie could bring you the copy to edit and re-write and bring it back for the Saturday page.”
Surprised, I agreed. And so, my career continued in a day when the friends I made over the next 20 years as we reared the Baby Boom generation were all stay-at-home mothers though most returned to similar or new jobs as their children reached college age.
From 1956 to 1976 I used a telephone and my cherished a manual typewriter to keep my reading public of the Saturday Church Page informed of new pastors, expanded buildings, the arrival of unfamiliar denominations and ministries in the Roanoke Valley.
When religion made news, such as in the God Is Dead controversy in the 1960s, I’d call a half dozen or more clergy for their opinion. And, throughout all these years I was always present on the First Monday at 11 a.m. to cover the meetings of the all-Protestant, all-male, all-white Roanoke Ministers Conference. On some of these days, Charlie’s schedule allowed him to be home with the daughter and two sons who arrived between 1956 and 1961. Later until all were in school, I found settled older women to whose homes I took the children before the clergy meetings. I received a tiny salary, but it kept my hand in.
By 1976, when the daily newspapers had ceased to be home-owned, I was given the chance to return on a 2.5-day a week basis. Working under the editorship of Sandra B. Kelly, I joined an office of 10 in the Features Department. With my own desk and phone, I developed stories for the Saturday Religion Page now carried in both morning and evening papers. These were my best years professionally.
I truly “had my cake and ate it too.”
The old listing of sermon topics was long gone, and the clergy group had broadened to include African-Americans, women, Roman Catholics and a few who considered themselves non-Christian. Along with faith-related columns each Saturday, I produced people profiles and occasionally traveled as far as Lexington, Wytheville, Blacksburg or Martinsville for special events.
In 1988 it all changed with retirements and transfers of power in the corporation. Ms. Kelly was moved to another staff job. My new female supervisor had little interest in religion news, gave me unfavorable reviews until I asked for a transfer to the newly-promoted Neighbors regional weekly supplements where Charlie also was sent. Now living in Salem, we continued for another decade, both part-time as we were clearly “over the hill” in an age when technology triumphed.
For several years of the 1990s, I traveled one Sunday monthly to a church in the four counties of Montgomery, Pulaski, Floyd and Craig to ‘sojourn” at a morning service in some remote communities in the New River Valley.
Finally, on a November day in 1996 with my critical former boss now elevated to the top Newsroom position, we were terminated.
It devastated my husband who took longer to recover than I, for in a few weeks I was producing Religion and other stories for the weekly Salem Times-Register then owned by a strong Disciples of Christ church member Ray Robinson. In time Charlie was invited to write for Salem too, and he did so until a few weeks before his death on March 30, 2008, of a massive stroke resulting from pulmonary fibrosis. He was nearly 85.
And after 20 more years at the weekly paper chain and as a voluntary contributor to the free monthly “Senior News I’m looking back.
