This is a mini-tale of thoughtfulness and coincidence, one that has nothing to do with accuracy, fairness and balance. If it were a short story, I’d title it “Lost and Found.”
It involves Johnny L. Moore of Hampton, a retired Air Force officer now a civil service worker at Langley Air Force Base, and the late W.N. “Bill” Cox, who worked for The Virginian-Pilot for 37 years, 30 of them as sports editor.
Moore called recently to say he had something we might be interested in for “nostalgic purposes.”
It was a Modern Library edition of Tolstoy’s War and Peace translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett. The book was laying in the middle of the intersection of Armistead Avenue and Deerfield Boulevard in Hampton when Moore approached the intersection about 6:30 a.m. on Oct. 16.
“It struck me as odd, like somebody had placed it there to be found,” said Moore.
The book’s opening page contained the following inscription:
“Property of W.N. Cox, Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, 1942. This book was acquired in order to have it on hand for the children, Patsy, Buddy and Tuffy, when they become of age for it. So, if you (you was underlined) have this book, please return it to me at once at the address above.”
“I thought it might have some sentimental value to somebody,” said Moore when he visited my office to deliver the book.
Moore could have simply tossed the book, or kept it, considering its age and the fact it is in pretty good condition. But he complied with Cox’s request.
A much-respected sports editor/columnist, Cox retired from The Pilot in 1967. He was well-read and had a personal library stocked with the classics. He died in his sleep in 1974 in Rowland, N.C.
I was running out of time to locate Cox’s offspring before this column was due when Commentary editor Lynn Feigenbaum popped into my office to ask why I had W.N. Cox’s file from the newspaper’s library.
“Why do you want it?” I asked.
“Because I’m running a piece by him Sunday,” she replied.
“What? He’s long dead,” I said in amazement.
Whereupon Feigenbaum recounted how she had gotten a request from Cox’s grandson, William “Bucky” Cox, in Morehead City, N.C., asking us to rerun a piece, “Farewell to October,” by his grandfather that originally appeared in The Virginian-Pilot on Nov. 1, 1962.
Talk about coincidence! It was kind of post-Halloween eerie. “That’s quite bizarre. It sends chills down my spine,” declared Bucky Cox, 40, when I told him of Moore’s finding the book.
Cox’s father is Tuffy, better known nowadays as Clinton M. Cox, 65, a retired school teacher and coach who lives a half-mile from his son in Morehead.
The younger Cox thinks his dad’s sister, Patsy, who lives in Hampton, may have lost the novel between moves. The elder Cox, who declared “it’s just unbelievable” when contacted, said his brother, William N. Cox Jr., or Buddy, died five years ago.
He’s not sure if Buddy ever read War and Peace, but he knows he never did. “I remember seeing it on a shelf somewhere,” he recalled.
I promised to send him the book, which has a faded UPS receipt ($1.97 for mailing a 3-pound, 2-ounce item) between Pages 476 and 477.
The time is …: Surprisingly, only a handful of readers contacted us about the “great big boo-boo,” as one caller termed it, on the bottom front of last Sunday’s paper.
I had intended to note our error in my daily CORRECTIONS column, but, quite frankly, it slipped my mind. When it occurred to me later, I was inclined to let it slide. Until a couple of readers, including Betty Reed, called to ask why there was no mention of our goof.
We told readers — in bold type, no less — that “Daylight-saving time starts today.”
“I don’t think so,” said one caller. “It’s history for this year.”
In his weekly critique, Pilot managing editor Dennis Hartig said: “Readers must wonder what planet we’re living on.”
Luckily, our promo said that, at 2 a.m., “your clocks should have been set back (italics mine) by one hour.”
Standard Time resumed last Sunday.
Bad heads: Speaking of goofs, we’ve had some incorrect or odd headlines of late. They’ve been unfortunate, but not exactly “a streak,” as one caller termed them.
Copy editors, who write headlines, have to read a ton of copy under deadline pressure, ascertain the gist of a story and fashion a header. Sometimes they misread a story, which is what happened with the Virginia brief Thursday about the more than 18,000 Fairfax County residents who received voter registration cards directing them to the wrong polling place. The headline said 1,800.
Then there was the recent Virginia brief that said a Woodbridge man was killed when his experimental aircraft crashed into a tree and an 86-year-old driver was killed by a state trooper responding to the accident. Problem is, the headline said the pilot and the state trooper were killed.
Here’s my choice for headscratcher of the month: “Robinson checks into jail, finds he can stay free.” It topped an Oct. 25 front-page story about state Del. Billy Robinson’s legal troubles, and suggested that Suffolk jail authorities didn’t charge him for his stay.
“We’re lucky that headline hasn’t showed up on the Jay Leno show,” Hartig said in his weekly critique.
Robinson won the right to stay free on bail pending his appeal of a contempt case. But the order came down while he was in jail, and he was released the next morning. The lawmaker had surrendered himself two days before he was scheduled to report. Which is what the story said.
