Gill Clopton had a variety of interests – he loved to write and take photographs – but he also was a self-proclaimed archivist who had taken it upon himself to try to preserve local history, one photograph at the time. In doing so, Clopton developed a following of almost 10,000 followers on social media.
Oh, and cats. He loved cats.
News of Clopton’s death was reported today.
Clopton, a 1979 graduate of Vance Senior High School, was not trained as a journalist, but he loved to write. About a year ago, he started an e-paper called “Piedmont Online” to promote positive news, sports and feature stories from Vance County and the surrounding area.
John C. Rose remembered Clopton during Tuesday’s TownTalk as someone whose efforts will be remembered.
“Even if it only exists on a Facebook thread, it’s been preserved,” Rose said, referring to the “Remember when…(reminiscing about Henderson, NC) posts that Clopton used to show long-forgotten photos that he had dug up, many from the former office space of The Daily Dispatch.
“It really underscores what he has done for the community,” Rose said in his discussion with Dr. Bill Dennis, known familiarly as “Little Bill,” whose grandfather started the local paper in the World War I era.
Dennis said, thanks in large part to his father’s and his grandfather’s “pack rat” tendencies, there was a lot of stuff for Clopton to go through.
After the paper was sold and the Chestnut Street building was being emptied, Clopton and several others carted out stacks and stacks of archived newspapers, clippings, photographs and more.
“He went down to the newspaper and talked to the people who were running the place,” Dennis said, and he was able to take possession of all that, well, history.
Clopton “single-handedly” saved so much that would otherwise been discarded
“Gill was tireless,” Dennis said, of his work on digitizing photos from The Dispatch.
As a college student, Dennis spent a couple of summers trying to help get things organized a bit at the paper. Whether Clopton saw the result of that effort is unclear.
And although Clopton never worked at the paper himself, he befriended “Big Bill” Dennis and spent many a happy time talking at the old Eckerd’s lunch counter – a fact that “Little Bill” hadn’t known at the time.
“He was an aspiring newspaper person for a long time,” Dennis said of Clopton. “It was always fascinating to talk to him,” He took photographs and wrote a column for the Henderson Dispatch for a time.
“Some of his columns were great,” Dennis said.
The online publication was a real labor of love, he added. “You just can’t ever do enough when you’re doing something like that.” Dennis said he read each weekly installment. “I thought he did a really good job with it…especially women’s sports because they didn’t get as much publicity as the boys’ (sports).”
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