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College Basketball

N&O sports writer A.J. Carr to retire

By Dane Huffman

Mar 27, 2009

There were no laptops and cell phones when A.J. Carr joined the Sports department of The News & Observer on Aug. 15, 1966.

But there were ACC basketball games and high school sports in a market that would explode in the coming decades.

What would not change, however, was Carr’s passion for covering sports, a dedication that drove a remarkable career. On Thursday, The N&O announced Carr would retire after a long and celebrated tenure.

“Oh yeah, I’ll miss it. I really will,” Carr, 66, said Friday. “I’m thankful for all the years here and all the people.”

Carr played high school football at Wallace-Rose Hill and called in results to The N&O. He also sent Sports Editor Dick Herbert clipping he wrote for the Wallace paper.

Herbert vowed to hire Carr someday. And after Carr graduated from Guilford and worked a year at The Greensboro Daily Record, Herbert did.

“I don’t think I would have left there to go anywhere else but The News & Observer,” Carr said.

Carr started at a time when reporters wrote their copy on typewriters, ripped it out and handed it to a Western Union employee, who would send it via telegram to the paper.

“We were just ahead of the Pony Express,” Carr quipped Friday.

That changed, and quickly. By the 1970s, reporters were filing stories over telephone lines and laptops and cell phones arrived in the 1990s.

Reporters who spend four decades in one department are rare. But while some other reporters moved to editing, to other papers, or to other careers, Carr loved his role and covered some of the monumental events in the history of Triangle sports. He wrote about N.C. State’s run to the 1974 NCAA basketball title, dozens of ACC Tournaments and Duke’s national basketball title in 2001.

He relished writing about lesser-known athletes and would spend as much time crafting a story about a tennis player as a top basketball star.

Carr, quiet and unassuming, has been respected by the people he covered, who appreciated his determination to be fair and devotion to accuracy. He also has a strong history of sports in the market and for years was known for his "Where are they now?" series that profiled former athletes.

Carr and his wife, Nancy, have five grandchildren, and Carr said he is looking forward to spending time with his family.

“I hope to be able to write some if I can,” Carr said. “And I’ll be sure to make time for my family and grandchildren.”

Carr expects his last day at The N&O to be April 21.

WRAL’s Dane Huffman worked with A.J. Carr for 24 years in the Sports department of The News & Observer.