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Published on: 5/22/2008
Last Visited: 5/22/2008
Lufkin Daily News City Editor Gary Willmon dies at 51
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Lufkin Daily News City Editor Gary Willmon dies at 51
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LUFKIN , Gary Willmon, city editor for The Lufkin Daily News and a career newsman and award-winning journalist, died Wednesday at a Lufkin hospital after a long battle with Chrohn's disease.He was 51.
(enlarge photo)City Editor Gary Willmon of The Lufkin Daily News died Wednesday following a long battle with Chrohn's disease.In 2006 he shared his story with readers, including the need for daily hydration to keep his system going.
Willmon's career spanned three decades, during which he won a number of awards.He began working for the LDN in 1975 as a freelancer and joined the sports staff full-time in 1976, and was editor until 1989.He moved to the Free Press in Diboll before returning to the LDN as city editor in 2005.
His co-workers, present and past, remember him as a consummate journalist with a rich sense of humor who brought the best of a by-gone era of the newspaper business to today's production.
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Willmon was working at the LDN when the paper was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for work by reporter Ken Herman and editor Joe Murray.
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"Gary was like a maestro conducting a symphony orchestra, the way he pulled sports pages together , never mind that he was a one-man band and in a one-man sports department," Murray said.
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But to Willmon, it was literally music to his ears, he said.
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Former reporter Bronwyn Turner, who worked at the LDN for about 20 years, said Willmon was one of those people who thought of others first, kind and good-natured.
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One of my friends said a few months ago that Gary is a newspaper icon in Angelina County.
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Gary Borders, publisher of the Longview News-Journal, was publisher at the LDN when Willmon returned in 2005.
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Willmon was open about his battle with Chrohn's disease, a condition that attacks the intestines and turns the body's immune system against itself.In 2006 he shared his personal battle in a feature article he penned for the LDN the disease.
Each day for him was a fight to live, requiring him to take in vast amounts of hydrating liquids 24 hours a day while managing the disease's effects.
Willmon's own closing thoughts in the story were a perfect description of how he chose to live his life , not in the shadow of his disease, but in spite of it.
He was blessed, he wrote, to have incredible doctors, pharmacists and support people , including Pattie, whom he described as an "awesome caregiver."
"But I'm proof you can live life to the fullest in spite of crazy circumstances," he wrote.
In addition to his beloved journalism, he enjoyed everything from parasailing in Hawaii, to riding roller coasters to pulling water slide duty at summer camp.
"Oh yeah, in between all that, I help bring you your daily newspaper," he wrote.
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