Wood: Breaking up with the greatest job on the planet isn’t easy, but I’ll never stop loving it

Equipped with a TRS-80 Model 100 held together by electrical tape and a prayer, the 19-year-old kid took the knowledge collected from his 5-minute tutorial on the “laptop” and dutifully headed out to Langley Speedway in Hampton.

After a few hours of racing, rain brought an early conclusion to the Saturday night local track bumpin’ and rubbin’, but the damage was done on that night in the summer of 1995.

I was hooked.

Not only did I have my first 537 words published as a stringer in a mid-summer Sunday edition of the Daily Press, I was hopelessly in love with the job. Several million printed words and slightly more reliable equipment later, I’m breaking up with newspapers to take on a challenging and exciting job as a technical writer at Index AR Solutions in Williamsburg, but oh, what a passionate affair it’s been for these 27 years — 23 of which I’ve proudly spent with the Daily Press.

My first job as a full-time professional in this business — or in any business — was at the Daily Press. I’m still convinced the only reason I was able to get paid to do it for 40-plus hours a week in the first place was because David Teel, Dave Fairbank, Dave Johnson, Jennifer Williams and Al Pearce went to bat for me.

With red hair past my T-shirt collar, I wandered back into an old office on Warwick Boulevard in ’98 after graduating from the University of Georgia — where I covered some mediocre football teams and extremely talented women’s basketball teams that included Phoebus High legend La’Keshia Frett Meredith (then-just Frett) for The Red & Black student newspaper before moving on to write sports for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for a year-and-half — and took a part-time offer at the Daily Press with no firm guarantee of future gainful employment.

I didn’t sleep for six months while taking any story then-sports editor Skip Miller tossed my direction and trying to impress upon people I’d read since my pre-teen days growing up in Newport News I was crazy enough to want to do this gig for the rest of my life if everything worked out right.

I’m beyond grateful I ultimately got the chance, because it was the ride of a lifetime.

In the summer of ‘99, the Daily Press trusted a 23-year-old cub reporter to go to Cuba for nine days to write about Hampton Christian High going on an exhibition baseball tour and mission trip.

It only got better from there.

After two years of Peninsula District high school sports reporting — still one of the favorite times of my career — I was thrown on to the Virginia Tech football beat. Life was about to change.

Over the course of 21 football seasons (19 of which I covered while living near Virginia Tech’s campus during the fall season), and nearly 600 roundtrip nine-hour drives to and from Blacksburg, I wrote about Warwick High grad Michael Vick in his final season on campus, three Orange Bowls, two Sugar Bowls and 16 other bowls (including a Virginia-Auburn Chick-fil-A Bowl) in seven other states.

I was there for 16 of former coach Frank Beamer’s 29 seasons at Tech. I was around for 20 of former defensive coordinator Bud Foster’s 33 seasons in Blacksburg.

I was on campus reporting April 16, 2007 for one of the darkest days in our Commonwealth’s history. I was in Lane Stadium 4½ months later when I experienced the most solemn moment of silence imaginable minutes before Tech’s first football game since the shooting tragedy that claimed 32 lives.

I’ve had bylines in 28 different states, from California to Vermont. During my years covering Tech and nine seasons covering the University of Virginia, I reported on football games in the crusty old Orange Bowl before they tore it down in 2008, the Horseshoe at Ohio State, the long-gone Georgia Dome, Tiger Stadium at LSU, Kyle Field at Texas A&M and the Rose Bowl.

I stood on the sideline in 2009 in Lane Stadium for Hampton High alum Tyrod Taylor’s completions to Danny Coale and Smithfield High product Dyrell Roberts in Tech’s improbable late comeback win against Nebraska. I saw Coale’s catch (it was a catch) that was ruled an incompletion in Tech’s overtime loss to Michigan in the 2012 Sugar Bowl.

Sharing more hotel rooms with Teel than I care to mention in our travels together during his time at the Daily Press and The Virginian-Pilot, but also doing my best to sponge even 1/10,000th of the immense talent he possesses, I bore witness to true greatness on and off the fields and basketball courts.

Oh, and I watched my fair share of incredible basketball games in the ACC — none more thrilling than U.Va.’s magical venture through its regional championship win against Purdue, the national semifinal win against Auburn and the national title game victory against Texas Tech in 2019.

I’ve mingled with Cameron Crazies breathing over my neck, soaked up the history covering multiple games in Madison Square Garden and experienced the transition in Charlottesville from venerable University Hall to pristine John Paul Jones Arena.

As much as the games and venues stand out, it’s the people I’ve crossed paths with and have either written about or forged relationships with, along with a few of the moments and images I experienced alone, that mean the most.

Teel, Fairbank, Johnson, Williams, Miller, Ed Moore, Marty O’Brien, Darryl Slater, Kyle Tucker, Doug Roberson, Jennifer Garvin, Michael Wright, Jami Frankenberry, Al Pearce, Sonny Dearth, Nick Mathews, Andi Petrini, Larry Rubama, David Hall and a laundry list of others I’ve worked with or alongside — thank you so much for making this journey amazing.

I met my future wife (and, eventually, ex-wife ... full disclosure) at the Daily Press when she was an 18-year-old freshman at Christopher Newport University working for us as a sports desk clerk and I was a 24-year-old reporter.

I visited with Tech alum and former Baltimore Orioles and Texas Rangers manager Johnny Oates in his Matoaca home while he was dying of brain cancer and marveled at his indefatigable faith. I’ve sat in silence in Blacksburg fighting back my own tears as a young lady sobbed while bravely describing one-on-one with me how her classmates were shot and killed.

I’ve watched the sun rise over the Allegheny Mountains on the way back from coverage of a Tech-West Virginia football game during the Big East days. I’ve seen the sun set below Biscayne Bay with a fishing rod in my hand the night before a Tech-Miami football game. I’ve watched a luminous moon shed light on smiling faces from the rooftop of the Hotel Nacional de Cuba in Havana during a summer carnival.

Yes, these are tough times for daily newspapers and local journalism. None of us know what’s in store for the business in the coming years, or even months.

Yet, don’t let anybody lead you to believe newspaper men and women don’t give their heart and soul to this profession. It means more to many of us than anything, sometimes at the cost of personal relationships.

Thank you to all of you for taking time out of your days to read what I’ve had to offer. I’ve loved every minute of bringing it to you — every single relentless marathon day and endless drive of it. This Daily Press newspaper — the one I grew up reading, the one my mom grew up reading and still reads — is where my life has happened.

This is the greatest job on the planet. You’ll never convince me otherwise.

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Norm Wood, 757-247-4644, nwood@dailypress.com