Veasey retires from Fairmont Times

John Veasey, my colleague and friend for 55 years, will retire after 58 years at the Fairmont Times.

For years I fed John information about WVU, Monongah High alumni and people I came across during my travels.

John Veasey

In the 1960s, when I was No. 2 in the Dayton Ohio Daily News sports department and John had only been at the Fairmont Times for maybe a half-dozen years but was Sports Editor, I offered him a job working for me. He declined because he wanted to remain in Marion County.

As John told Editor Misty Poe in his retirement interview: "I had a lot of opportunities (my offer being one) but I never wanted them. I just loved it here.”

Marion County was the winner in that decision. John is a class act. I wish him well.

By the way, when I graduated from WVU School of Journalism, managing editor/sports editor Bill Evans, a legend in West Virginia journalism, offered me $5 a week more than the Williamson Daily News to come to the Fairmont Times.

I declined and went to Williamson for $55 a week for one reason: I wanted to make my mark in life and in journalism on my own, not sheltered by my family and people who have known me since I was a kid. I guess the adventurous spirit that led me, in retirement, to 55 countries, 44 states, 13 cruises and 20 winters in Florida already was stirring in my blood.

I never regretted it. And I’m sure that John Veasey never regrets that he turned down a 50% pay raise and stayed in Fairmont.

We each choose our own paths in life, and which road to take. As Yogi Berra once famously said when giving directions to a home he had purchased: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” In Yogi’s case, both parts of the fork led to his house, because the road was a semi-circle, which many who quote Yogi on that didn’t know.

Veasey will continue to write his notebook for the Sunday edition of the Times, so I guess I’ll still feed him tips and articles, many of them copies of what I write for this Monongah High Alumni blog.

John and wife Rita have a son, Chance and his wife Keiko and their two children, Kaiya and Leo of Minneapolis, Minnesota; and two stepsons, Todd and his wife Victoria and four children Jack, Lilly, Grant and Wesley of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and Ryan and his wife Alison and their two children R.T. and Asher of Sissonville.

To read the excellent article on John by Editor Misty Poe, the daughter of former WVU Athletics Sports Information Director Shelley Poe, click on http://www.timeswv.com/news/john-veasey-retiring-after-years-at-newspaper/article_3aa72564-8879-11e6-9995-9f6609349133.html