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Norma Lugar was a pioneering female journalist and an editor whose writers all lost a true friend. |
The founding editor of this magazine enjoyed more than five decades as an award-winning journalist and editor.
I am heartbroken to have to tell you that this magazine lost its heart and soul a few weeks back.
Norma Lugar, who worked for us at Mountain Homes’ parent company most of the years since 1976, passed away at age 75 on April 13. In the days just prior she thought – we all thought – she was well on her way to recovery from her second bout with cancer in the last two years.
Norma was the first editor I ever hired at Leisure Publishing, and she put our city magazine – The Roanoker – on solid footing when it was just two years old and people were still saying it didn’t have a chance to survive. (The Roanoker is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year.)
When we decided, in 2003, to launch a magazine dedicated to homes and communities in the Southern Highlands, there was no need to conduct a search for an editor. Because in our offices was a skilled and talented editor who not only loved beautiful homes, but had been profiling the most prominent ones in the Roanoke area for the previous 27 years.
And so, if you pull out that first edition of Mountain Homes – Fall 2003 – you see a magazine that came into being fully formed. And for all the issues since and including this one – it was another virtue of Norma’s to work well ahead – she found beautiful homes, inviting communities and warm, welcoming people from throughout the Southern Mountains.
Her wonderful reporting and gentle writing touch won the magazine countless awards from the National Federation of Press Women, which in 2004 chose Mountain Homes as the best magazine in the country. In fact, this pioneering journalist, who worked in newsrooms when they were filled with males, cigarettes and general disdain for women, was a founding member of the Virginia Press Women.
It is of course impossible to quantify the loss we feel, not only here at Leisure Publishing, but also all over the Roanoke Valley, where remembrances came in to our offices from so many friends and fans. Norma Lugar was loved in her home community, where she served on the board of the Mental Health Association; it was out of her service there that she became a champion for the cause of battered women.
On a personal level, my own loss of a dear friend is made all the more acute and painful by the fact that the last thing she ever wanted to do was retire. The ink on this page was in her blood for more than 50 years.
–Richard Wells, Publisher
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