Darrell teaching at the Roanoke Regional writers Conference

Darrell Laurant, a Writer's Writer, Dies

My longtime dear friend Darrell Laurant, who retired from journalism after 40 years of sports writing, reporting news and writing a superb column for the Lynchburg News-Advance, has died. 

I'm not sure exactly how old Darrell was, but he and I were close in age and I'm 78.

He was a native of New York, and in retirement moved back home.

He not only worked as a daily newspaper journalist, but he wrote at least seven books, all centered on Lynchburg. The best of them was Inspiration Street, which shined a light on a couple of blocks in downtown Lynchburg that spawned some of the most important African-Americans of the 20th Century. 

His writing was rarely about Darrell Laurent the superb, award-winning journalist and it ranged from fall-down funny humor to deadly serious court cases or sudden deaths. His writing was always near-perfect, always fair, always error-free.

About 16 years ago, Darrell invited me to teach a writers conference class at a small, remote elementary school in Bedford County, which had been built for Black children  years before and was finally abandoned when integration finally took hold.

I was stunned to see the number of writers in attendance, including some who were famous and others would become so. I was so inspired, in fact, that I brought the idea for a conference back to Roanoke--and its much larger population--with me. It kicked off almost immediately at the Jefferson Center and after that first one, Hollins invited us to hold the conference on its campus. Darrell was a teacher at several of the first few and he was a good one.

The conference is now mature and has sold out just about every year. You can tie it all back to Darrell, who always wanted to help writers.

In retirement, he started a group that helped get writers jobs. Always the writer, the writer's writer.