Former Roanoke Times biz reporter dies from stroke

Charles Stebbins, a former business reporter for the Roanoke Times, died Sunday from a stroke, according to a story in Monday’s newspaper.

Mike Allen wrote, “While Frances Stebbins wrote about churches and religion, her husband ran the bureau covering Roanoke County and Salem for 10 years, sending in stories using a teletype machine from an office on Roanoke College’s campus.

“Later he was made a business reporter, writing a consumer reports column called Quickline.

“Charles Stebbins never interjected his own opinions on the topics he covered — though he once made an exception on the topic of baseball. Though he once professed to being a fan of the sport, Stebbins tucked a note into a biography kept on file at The Roanoke Times. ‘With greedy players and mercenary owners, baseball is no longer a sport. It is a cutthroat business,’ he wrote. ‘This applies to most professional sports in the later decades of the 20th century.’

“Stebbins was old school. Over his lifetime he needed to write only about a dozen corrections for his stories, which never wasted words. He had little use for ‘flowery language,’ his wife said.”

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