John Moeur is at peace.
I write this because of any of the journalists in the area, I worked with him from the start, when he first came to Roanoke Rapids.
I won’t say it was the perfect ride because if any two people, two people with the same ideas on how journalism should be done in the Roanoke Valley locked horns it would be us.
John cared about me and was the first to notice the day in the middle of the summer in 2009 I was tearing things from my bulletin board at the Herald, cleaning out my desk, getting ready to leave because I was fed up with the way what is the previous administration there handled some things.
He called me into his office.
“What are you doing?” He asked.
“I can’t work here anymore,” I replied, explaining the unfair thing that was happening to our photographer at the time.
“What are you going to do?”
“Go head to head with you guys.”
“I don’t want you to get lost out there,” he said.
Perhaps, a little too cocky, I replied, “I’m not going to get lost.”
Yes, that was John. He cared.
He had ways that turned many people off, including his staff, including the public.
I think, however, if he hadn’t been fighting the demons he was fighting, the demons that took him away from us Friday, he would have been a different person, perhaps would have grabbed the first Pulitzer prize for Roanoke Rapids.
From the moment he got here he was fighting those demons, the demons of weight out of control.
There were places he couldn’t go because of it, places where he would endure stares and snickers and we hated it for him.
Word came to me there would be nights in his duplex his neighbor would hear him crying, tears no doubt indelibly linked to his struggle with weight, that limited his independence, his mobility. The one thing about journalists is most of us are, to certain extents, independent creatures who like to be mobile.
John couldn’t and for some reason he couldn’t shake it, although plenty of arm chair nutritionists asked why he just didn’t lose the weight.
If it was that easy he probably would have but there were battles raging in him is my guess, battles that would require physical and mental assaults to combat, battles that many of us don’t know about, battles that are none of our business.
His many hospital stays wore on us because John, despite the demons at work, was going to get a paper out, even from a hospital bed, his health be damned.
The battle wore on, I was told to leave the paper over something I didn’t do and for a while we stayed in touch, he called me on my 2009 birthday and I told him I was willing to cooperate with the Herald in any way I could.
I believe the Roanoke Valley has a lost a great journalist. No, we didn’t agree, I didn’t like some of his ideas and he didn’t like some of mine but there was never a time I couldn’t pick up the phone and he would give his advice.
He helped me through the land mine that was and still is the Roanoke Rapids Theatre and at budget time I found I missed him the most because the man would tear through a budget like an accountant. The man knew politics better than anyone who thinks they are part time pundit.
No, our relationship was not perfect because we were alike in many ways, stubborn, hungry to get the story, we just had different ways to get them.
If John had beaten those demons I wonder what the state of journalism would be in the Roanoke Valley.
He had them, however, and they finally beat him. Now, however, there are no more tears cried from a lonely duplex in Roanoke Rapids. John Moeur is at peace.
Reprinted from my news website — rrspin.com
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