Former T-D outdoors columnist Garvey Winegar dies

Garvey Lynn Winegar wrote of the outdoors with an uncommon grace, a poet with a fishing pole who made friends of readers who loved the fields and streams as he did and those who didn't know a rainbow trout from a rainbow.

Mr. Winegar, who retired from The Times-Dispatch in 2003, died Monday in his native Scott County in Southwest Virginia. He was 73.

"He was a gifted writer, a good friend and a person who made tremendous connections with readers," said William H. "Bill" Millsaps Jr., retired executive editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch who hired Mr. Winegar in 1986. "He didn't get fan mail, he got love letters. People responded to him in an amazing way."

Self-described as a "wanderer, vagabond, attracted to wild and remote places, a bit disillusioned with some of what passes for 'progress,' " Mr. Winegar was living in the same house where he grew up near Gate City at the time of his death. The small, four-room home did not have electricity during Mr. Winegar's childhood, and the nearest running water was provided by the North Fork of the Holston River that flowed, as Mr. Winegar wrote on his blog a few years ago, "so close you could throw a 3/8-ounce spinnerbait in the river from the porch on a good morning if you wanted to. But no one wants to. Best to walk a few steps down the bank and fish from the edge."

Glen Thomas Winegar, his "weird brother Tosh," whom he often wrote about in his columns, really does exist and lived up the hill, and is just as much of a character as Mr. Winegar described.

A son of Southwest Virginia, Mr. Winegar, the oldest of five children, helped farm tobacco and corn in his youth, and developed his love of books and writing when he was stranded in a hospital with tuberculosis during high school. Blessed with a marvelous voice, he was lead singer and rhythm guitarist for a Staunton group called The Kingsmen, which later changed its name to the Statler Brothers. He left the group before they reached stardom because his job at the time required him to relocate to another state. Mr. Winegar liked to joke he was like "the drummer who left the Beatles."

Living in Waynesboro in the late 1960s, Mr. Winegar noticed the local paper had no outdoors column, so he began writing one. At first, he was paid $15 per piece and then was hired full time. He later moved to The Charlottesville Daily Progress, where he wrote about the outdoors and served as a general news columnist.

He cut the figure of an outdoors writer with his bushman hats and safari shirts, but he was just as well known for being an exceptional writer and a genuinely nice man. One of the highlights of his time in Richmond was his 230-mile canoe float from the headwaters of the James River to Richmond in 1993. His series of stories about his experiences on the river eventually became a book, "The Unseen River." Millsaps described the series as "riveting and one of the best features we published."

Danny Finnegan, editor of The Times-Dispatch who worked with Mr. Winegar in Charlottesville and in Richmond, described him as "a great storyteller, whether it was in print, in song or just around the fire. His writing was filled with wisdom disguised as humor, and while he was a fine outdoorsman and outdoors writer, he never let that define or confine him. He wrote about people and emotions as much as he did hooks and bullets."

Mr. Winegar won numerous state and national awards, and co-wrote two books with his second wife, Deane. Howard Owen, business editor of the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star and a former editor at The Times-Dispatch as well as a novelist, described Mr. Winegar as "one of the finest natural writers I ever knew."

Mr. Winegar once wrote in a column that he felt "more at home in the woods or in a canoe than, say, at a rock concert or a riot, which are increasingly hard to tell apart." Despite that, he never grew fond of a few things, like spiders, which gave him "a galloping case of the heebie-jeebies. They run a shiver up my spine like a window-shade gone berserk."

In a story about black bears, he wrote his years of experience taught him members of the species are shy, timid and even cowardly when it comes to confronting people. He included a disclaimer: "One should add that none of the above applies to grizzlies. They wake up dyspeptic and get meaner as the day unfolds."

Mr. Winegar, who was married three times and divorced twice, is survived by his wife, Brenda, children Anthony, Lavinia and LaDonna, brothers Glen and Wayne and sister Kay. Family will receive visitors Friday from 6 to 8 p.m., followed by a celebration of life service at Colonial Funeral Home in Weber City.