GLORY DAYS and POETRY

Recalling the Life and Times of Vic Burkhammer in the Newsroom and on the Poetry Frontlines

A 2009 image of Vic Burkhammer’s glasses resting on an edition of the Charleston Gazette, whose copy desk he helmed for a quarter century. SECOND IMAGE: A Christmas gift from his wife Nancy. | Both images from Vic’s Facebook page.

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By Douglas John Imbrogno | the STORYistheTHING.com | january7.2024

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In the heyday of the Charleston Gazette in West Virginia’s capital city, in the crowded newsroom of one of America’s best ‘kick-ass-and-take-names‘ small newspapers of its time, you never knew when someone was going to go off.

It might be a fight over someone’s draft article or column being unforgivably altered or hatcheted by the city desk. Your shoulders stiffen as the feature columnist, beloved across the city and state, raises her voice far beyond the decibels you thought could ever emanate from such a diminutive body. Or you, yourself — as in me — might curse as crudely and demonically as Linda Blair in ‘The Exorcist,’ leaning into one ear of the graphics editor after you become enraged because you feel he screwed up your brilliant feature page plans. (I know I apologized years ago, David, but here’s another go at it …)

The Gazette newsroom, at least in the glory days I experienced in the 1990s and early 21st century in my 30-year-career there, featured a collection of bright, sometimes maddening, often eccentric, frequently cranky and quirky oddballs. Plus, true professionals, too. It was a great and fun place to work. It was also intense and high pressure, given the standards we aimed to uphold in the tradition of animating publisher Ned Chilton (who’d passed by the time I arrived in 1988, but hung around as a watchful spirit), the old-school, Lou Grant-ish editor-in-chief Don Marsh, and others.

Vic posted this image to Facebook in 2012, a magnifying glass highlighting legendary publisher Ned Chilton, editor Don Marsh, and Gazette reporter Will Haygood, who went on to a notable career at The Washington Post and as an author. Vic noted: ‘3 of my heroes.’

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All of that that brings me to Vic Burkhammer, a dear comrade-in-deadlines and a longtime friend, who worked for 35 years at the Gazette, with 25 of those as news editor. That job description refers not to the news desk, but to the copy desk, the last, essential checkpoint before articles and columns wing off into the wider world. Vic died at age 74 on the last day of 2024, and his memorial service took place on this day in Charleston, W.Va., at First Presbyterian Church, where he was a longtime deacon. I have a few things to share about this sweet human being, beloved colleague, and a poetic partner in our early 21st Century attempts to reinvent newspaper feature sections for the cyber age.

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A photo of Vic Burkhammer that I colorized. He had one of the Top 10 Mustaches in West Virginia

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A newspaper’s readership often only ever comes to know the marquee names: The investigative reporters and busy news correspondents; the beloved longtime feature columnists; the editor-in-chief and the featured op-ed columnists. But the copy desk — at least back in the day when they were fully staffed with cantankerous, staunch grammar cops and no-nonsense ‘What does this even mean?’ final arbiters before deadline — are the backstop and core of a fine newspaper. For, in addition to laying out pages and writing headlines, copy editors are the last ones — after the city desk — to critique your prose, reporting, reasoning, and language before the public reads your work.

The job attracts the usual personality disorder-lite characters endemic to newspaperdom: feisty, obstinate, pugnacious, and sure-of-themselves folk, intent on eviscerating your ‘copy’ (newspaper-speak for your article draft) for the greater good. I can’t count the times — certainly in the hundreds — that a Gazette copy editor altered or revised my precious, immortal prose, much to my deep chagrin and distress. Only to re-read the story in the morning when well-caffeinated and realize something.

Hey, that’s not actually bad. It’s better, even …

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Books listed in Vic Burkhammer’s Facebook profile as him having read and favored.

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Yet Victor — I always called him that in person, not Vic — was unlike the more flamboyant, tetchy personalities in the room. He succeeded a true character as copy desk chief — ‘Moo’ Cochran. It was extremely wise to avoid stirring into action Moo’s cranky, obstreperous, crabby side, although it would often manifest of its own accord at some offense against the language or to reason itself. Vic was about the exact opposite, personality-wise. A cool, calm, collected character, his equilibrium was like the calm eye of the hurricane. The few times I heard or saw him lose it and raise his voice were very notable, if because of their rarity. As someone who wrestled with his own self-important crabbiness — ‘Do you people not realize I am single-handedly trying to reinvent the American newspaper feature section for the digital age?!? — Victor’s desk was where I went when I needed to check in with the Mother Ship of self-control and seeming unflappability.

Victor was a port in the storm of the crazeball Gazette newsroom, I tell you.

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Here’s an archive from early 2007 of some of the multimedia content — blogs, ‘webcasts,’ slideshows, and podcasts we were uploading regularly to the Charleston Gazette’s website. Note the ‘MountainWord’ podcast at right, an offshoot of the poetry and writing blog overseen by Vic Burkhammer.

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But we really were trying to reinvent the American newspaper feature section for the onrushing digital age. And Vic Burkhammer had a direct hand in it. The Gazette possessed a regional and national reputation as an iconic model for how to unflinchingly, fearlessly cover a small state’s governance and politics via smart, relentless, unflagging beat and investigative reporters, matched with strident editorial commentary by Marsh, Jim Haught, and dauntless guest columnists like Gerry Beller, Rick Wilson, and others. When Marsh hired me as arts & entertainment editor in 1988, and then overall feature editor in the 1990s, I took it as my mission to publish stories on why life was worth living in West Virginia, after the news pages pointed out what had gone off the rails in the Mountain State or needed fixing or building out.

As the World Wide Web grew out of its infancy in the early years of the 21st century, we saw new ways to share such cultural, arts, and feature stories and subjects. This new thing called ‘blogs.’ And video shows we called ‘webcasts.’ And this thing called a ‘podcast.’ And … heck, who wants to write and compile a regular blog and podcast about poetry and writing that we’ll call ‘MountainWord’?

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We described the Gazette’s ‘MountainWord’ blog (and eventual podcast and webcast) this way: ‘The word on poets & poetry with a West Virginia connection.’ Vic covered the scene passionately and well.

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Enter Vic Burkhammer, whom I knew loved poetry, which had been part of his masters education and focus at West Virginia University. Vic cast a wide net as the impresario of ‘MountainWord, alerting the Gazette’s cultural cognoscenti whenever poets of note might be in the area, showcasing, profiling, and interviewing them. Such as West Virginia poet laureate Irene McKinney (SEE ABOVE). And acclaimed writer Joyce Carol Oates, who delivered the 2007 Betsy K. McCreight Lecture in the Humanities at the University of Charleston. Vic even put himself in front of the camera as part of some ‘MountainWord’ webcasts, reading a Halloween-appropriate poem from ‘Macbeth’ in 2008. And voicing the poem “To a Special Boy,” from disability activist and writer Shirley Klein’s first book, “Of Bitter Choice” (Mountain State Press), in honor of her work after her death.

CLICK TO VIEW VIDEO

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Vic and I shared a love of Japanese poets Issa and Basho, so much so that he published published a chapbook of 15 haiku on Issaa and crafted a MountainWord video primer on the art of the haiku (SEE BELOW), which featured Issa’s epic, contrarian advice on domestic spiders.

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Images from Vic’s MountainWord video explainer on haiku. View it at this link.

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You get to a certain age — I turned 67 this past May — and people in your orbit start regularly dying on you. Some are acquaintances, the folks at one remove from your inner life whose funerals and memorials you are on the fence about whether to attend, depending on the weather or your mood. Some are friends, whom you feel an obligation to see along their way out. Others — and these are only ever a handful, in my estimation — are fellow travelers in your life. Folks you were happy to have walked alongside on the Long March, because they got you and you got them. Victor was a fellow traveler for me.

I used the word ‘heyday‘ above to describe our shared career at the Charleston Gazette, memorializing what Bruce Springsteen christened as our ‘glory days — they pass you by …’ Yet looking up the word ‘heyday‘ in my Oxford English Dictionary (yes, I am that much a word nerd to have an OED app), I see it defined this way:

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HEYDAY: the period of a person’s greatest success, popularity, activity, or vigour … Late 16th century: denoting good spirits or passion. From archaic ‘heyday!’ an exclamation of joy and surprise.

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It was a joy, and a time full of good spirits and passion, knowing Vic Burkhammer and sharing the same, crazy, rich, wonderful room together for decades. I leave the last word — the MountainWord, so to speak — to Joyce Carol Oates. Victor compiled and posted some quotes from her in a blogpost to the Gazette website upon her 2007 visit. His remarks speak to the deep pleasure and nourishment he found in poetry and great writing.

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And here are those last words from Joyce Carol Oates, from several quotes Victor himself chose to end his post on the writer. He introduced them this way: ‘Before you go feast on these five quotes, for sustenance, for the road.’ The two quotes below point back to his own heart and soul. And how I will be missing him along the road.

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