When I was eleven, the world changed with the thud of a newspaper bundle thrown from the luggage hold of a Trailways bus.

I was delivering our afternoon paper, The Greenville Daily Reflector, in the small town of Fountain, North Carolina where I grew up. The headline across the front page was the largest I had ever seen: “SUPREME COURT BANS SCHOOL SEGREGATION.”

I wasn’t sure what it meant. Until that day, the only news most people talked about was something called “the McCarthy hearings,” but that had not punctured my fifth grade, touch football world.

This was different. I could tell by the way my customers, white and black, reacted. This was a story we would be talking about for a long time.

---

• Bill Walker To Retire In June From Channel 9 'Eyewitness News'
• SLIDESHOW: Bill Walker - A Career In News
• NEW ARTICLE: 'Anchorman's Voice Carried Far To The West On A Down-east Wind'

---

I have seen the world changed by other big stories since that day in May 1954. A cold November afternoon in Dallas would be the defining story of my generation, just as a September morning in New York would define my children’s.

Delivering those stories has been part of my life for most of my life. I have learned that communication is more than delivering words and pictures. We all try to understand the world around us or to understand how to relate to a world that cannot be explained. That is the kind of reporting that has been the great challenge and given me the most satisfaction.

Along the way, I’ve been fortunate to have talented people around me, a solid forward-looking company in Cox, thousands of people who trusted me to get the story right, and a wife and sons who understood that I work nights.

What a lucky guy!