Glenn Sumpter was in his late 30s when he visited Richmond County in 1970 and took a job almost by accident, yet he became one of its most influential, and entertaining, voices over the next four decades.

He died early Wednesday morning at Duke Hospital after suffering complications from recent surgery. He was 77.

Sumpter was the editor of the Richmond County Daily Journal for about 25 years, garnering awards and the respect of readers and journalists across the state. Vision problems forced him to retire in 1996.

His close friend and colleague, Bert Unger, recalled the first time Sumpter walked into the Daily Journal’s newsroom to visit a former colleague at the Hickory Daily News.

“Glenn had just returned from the University of West Virginia, where he went to get his master’s degree, and he came to the Journal to visit his friend from the Hickory paper, Max Fields, who was our editor at the time,” Unger recalled. “Max told him, ‘You ought to go up to Mr. Cadieu’s office and put in for the job,’ and he did and Neal hired him on the spot.”

Unger said he and Sumpter shared a special bond. Both had the same birthday and were raised within 100 miles of each other - Sumpter in West Virginia and Unger in Pennsylvania.

Eventually, Unger would be the managing editor of the Journal while Sumpter was the head of the news department.

“Glenn was a mentor to me,” Unger said. “He was the one who convinced me I should switch over to the news side. I had been a sports editor and photographer before that ... We were a good team. We could kind of read each other ... Wherever one of us was, the other was usually there, but I got left a lot, too.”

Former Daily Journal Publisher Neal Cadieu recalled the mark Sumpter made on journalism in North Carolina.

“Glenn won many press awards for his Daily Journal editorials and features,” he said. “He recommended several good writers during his Daily Journal career, including the first full-time African-American reporter Barry Saunders, a Rockingham native and now a columnist for the News & Observer.”

He said that as the staff at the newspaper grew, Sumpter was allowed to invest more time in the editorial page, eventually writing a column for each edition. Often, Sumpter and Cadieu would have pieces published side-by-side, offering readers dual perspectives for issues they disagreed on.

His increased editorial responsibilities didn’t limit Sumpter’s community-based activities, his long-time boss recalled. He was active with several organizations, including the historical society and community theatre.

“He had a wide-range of interests, and an even more wide-range of friends,” Cadieu said. “Not much happened that he didn’t know about, and if those events affected life in Richmond County, he would make sure they were correctly reported.”

In the newsroom, Unger recalled a quiet leader with a robust sense of humor.

He said there was little turnover at the paper while Sumpter was at the helm of the news department, and he was well-thought of among those he worked with.

“He had a way of putting things that he didn’t have to say very much and you knew exactly what he wanted,” Unger recalled. “We were one of the best small dailies in the state, mostly because of his editorial writing and column writing. It was unfortunate that he had to leave the business early when he went blind.”

He also recalled Sumpter’s “almost photographic memory.”

He recalled covering meetings for the Hamlet paper that Sumpter covered for Rockingham, where he would compile pages of notes while Sumpter scribbled a few lines on one side of an envelope.

“And he would write the whole story from just that,” Unger said.

He said Sumpter’s career at the Daily Journal “put the newspaper on the map” with the sharp commentary of his columns, but said Sumpter preferred to write about politics more than any other subject.

“He loved politics, and he wrote a lot about the political nature around here, and statewide as well,” Unger said. “One thing about Glenn was that he could chew you out in the newspaper that morning, and go out with the same crowd that night. He had a way of phrasing things so that it didn’t offend people.”

Former N.C. Rep. Hugh Lee was one of the politicians who was at times chided by Sumpter the editor, but he said that never interfered with his friendship with the man who he describes as “perceptive.”

The two would go on to serve on the RCC Board of Trustees for the better part of two decades together.

“He worked on me a couple of times, but about 90 percent of the time he was right anyway,” Lee said. “Glenn was never mean with anything he wrote. I thought he was one of the best writers I’ve ever known. Glenn was a great asset for Richmond County. Not many small papers, in my judgment, had a better newspaper man than him. In my mind, he was every bit the equal to the men at the big newspapers.”

Following his retirement, Sumpter continued to publish columns in the Daily Journal, and also focused his literary skills on the history of the county he came to call home.

Sumpter and his wife Robbyn worked with county historian John Hutchinson on volume two of the Historical Society’s Richmond County history, Mixed Blessings: Richmond County from 1900 to 2000, which will go on sale this fall.

A memorial service for Sumpter will be held Saturday at 11 a.m. at First United Methodist Church of Hamlet.

Staff Writer Philip D. Brown can be reached at (910) 997-3111 ext. 32, or by e-mail at pbrown@yourdailyjournal.com.