When Larry was in Jonesboro he was always fair. At the time I worked at a place that very seldom got fair coverage. Larry was old school and his pieces were generally right down the middle. There isn’t a higher compliment for guys like that.

He chain-smoked Kools at his desk until an out-of-state newspaper group bought The Sun and banned indoor smoking. Then it was an every-five-minute retreat to the back door. Pity the poor reporter who was summoned outside to hear a Fugate rant about Las Vegas or Oklahoma (apparently his favorite places) or on the City Hall scandal-du-jour as menthol fumes floated in the reporter’s direction.

His less-than-couth manner could be less than endearing, especially when in the mornings he’d shout “What are you working on today?” with that voice that has more gravel than a backwoods county road.
I’m told he still has a penchant to ask on the phone, “Anything else?” even though he’s the one who initiated the call.

Yes, he is quirky — no time to mention all the other habits or the “birth cerftificate” that puts him at an age a lot younger than he looks — but the man taught me plenty about reporting. He’s a scholar when it comes to the FOIA and his handle on Jonesboro is better than that of anybody who has worked at The Sun since he left.

He knows the questions to ask and when to ask them. If I needed a contact anywhere to answer a question about anything, Fugate could point me in the right direction.

His reporting skill was top-notch. His mannerisms made it fun (at least sometimes) to work in a newsroom.

I have Fugate to thank for helping me start a career that led to a stint in Washington.

Like you, Rex, I wondered how a kid from the outskirts of Trumann could be so lucky as to have a job covering a presidential campaign or actually having a member of Congress return calls on a regular basis.

The answer is simple: Old-school bosses like Fugate and others along the way who’d cuss at you if a story wasn’t good enough, yell at you if you weren’t writing it quickly enough and, when they knew you’d had enough, let you yell right back.