The story below is an excerpt from our July/August 2018 issue. For the complete article and more like it subscribe today, log in to read our digital edition or download our FREE iOS app. Thank you!
You put together a magazine six times a year for 30 years, you have some memories, some inside-baseball-type notes and other recollections. Blue Ridge Country Editor in Chief Kurt Rheinheimer uses some favorite covers as a launch point to do some recollecting on those three decades.
June/July 1988:
The Linn Cove Viaduct
Inside the issue: Richard Wells, who is still owner of the company and the magazine, said in his welcome: “What could be more wonderful—more Americanly wonderful—than mom and dad, two brothers and a sister, a picnic lunch in the trunk of a 1954 Oldsmobile Super 88, and the beauty of the Blue Ridge Parkway before them?” This cover, by the way, would be just the first of six over the 30 years to present the Linn Cove Viaduct.
September/October 1988:
West Virginia’s Glade Creek Grist Mill
Inside the issue: A loving portrait of Janette Carter, and her role in keeping alive the musical traditions of the Carter Family on the admonition of her father A.P before he died: “I’d like to see my music carried on,” he told her, “and if I’ve got a child who can do it, you are the one.”
November/December 1988
Male and female cardinals on an evergreen in the snow
Inside the issue: Background first: Founder Richard Wells’ first publication was Ski South, a guide to skiing in the Southern mountains, and he remains passionate about the sport to this date. The issue’s skiing piece opened with a photo of a skier on a slope. Written to me, those 30 years ago, in Wells’ distinctive handwriting: “Kurt/If graphics are to help tell the story, then we failed here. This pix could be from NE, Colo, Canada, Austria, Chile—anywhere.” Ouch. And great advice.
September/October 1989
Fall scenic
Inside the issue: Su Clauson (now, as contributing editor, Clauson-Wicker) quoted the late and colorful storyteller Ray Hicks, in her profile of him, speaking of the “Jack” of Jack Tales fame: “Jack is so lazy he can’t keep the flies off hisself.”
July/August 1990
Linn Cove Viaduct in full green with rhododendron foreground
Inside the issue: Publisher Richard Wells took the occasion to announce that “we were immensely flattered when we were voted Best New Regional Magazine in the United States by Successful Magazine Publishing.”
The story above is an excerpt from our July/August 2018 issue. For the complete article and more like it subscribe today, log in to read our digital edition or download our FREE iOS app. Thank you!
