Friends, colleagues remember former Times-News editor Madison Taylor who died Thursday at 62

Such was the first impression he made.

On his way back Down East, he heard something ominous from the rear of his car. When he pulled over to figure out what it was, he returned them to the fields from which they came, he later told us.

He led the newsroom until 2016 with that same grace and good humor, though he could also put a good scare into you when he’d had enough.  

When I got up this morning, I got a message that he died at Duke Hospital on Thursday, Jan. 6. He had been ill since a beach trip this summer. Kim Steele is a big Williams High School football booster and was a regular writer of letters to the editor, which is how she got to know Madison. They became friends and stayed in touch. She worried when he stopped posting photos of his vacation.

It turns out his lungs were badly damaged, and for the last few months of his life, it was a struggle to get out of a chair. 

Roselee Papandrea Taylor, Madison’s wife, posted that he succumbed to combined pulmonary fibrosis and emphysema. He was 62.

Madison told me he was naturally introverted. He chose a career in journalism and communications because it forced him to be social and that was good for his state of mind. It was good for a lot of people, it turned out.

“He was one of the first people to really believe in me as a writer, but also as a young professional,” said Molly McGowan Gorsuch, former Times-News reporter and public information officer with Henderson County Public Schools. “I didn’t see myself as a young professional yet, but he helped me grow the confidence that I needed for the career I have today.”

He wrote that he dedicated his life to telling stories. The Danbury Reporter was the first paper to publish Madison’s work. He was 12 and covered little league games in the town of 175 where he grew up. He was also playing in them, “no conflict of interest there,” he wrote in his blog. It was what he always wanted to do. He worked hard to make it his career and it showed him a larger world like he hoped it would.

He was also good at it. Madison’s writing is fun to read, clear, witty and he was old school about accuracy. Woe betides the reporter who was not.

“Madison was a caring editor who was committed to the community, blessed with a wonderful wit; he was consistent and fair,” said former Times-News Publisher Steve Buckley. “I worked with many editors in 40 years in newspapers, Madison was among the very best.”

Madison covered sports at the Times-News from 1983 to 1987, where he achieved a childhood dream of covering the ACC Tournament. He moved over to the news side and was the assistant managing editor when he left for the Jacksonville Daily News in 1992. He was managing editor there until 2007 and had wild stories about Onslow County. 

He had some wild stories about Alamance County, too. He loved to tell them. 

Jacksonville is where Madison and Roselee met. An old friend of his said she made him the man he was meant to be. They did what many consider impossible – make a marriage work while working together. But they made it more than work.

“I looked to them as an awesome example of what I want an enduring love to look like,” McGowan Gorsuch said. “They were always professional … but you could tell how much they cared for each other.”

Madison cared about the people who worked for him. McGowan Gorsuch said he was like an uncle, including her in the newsroom boys talk but knowing when to reel things in, having her for Thanksgiving when she had no family in town, and standing up for her when her reporting set people off. He followed her career after she left Burlington as he did with many of the young reporters he worked with. 

He and Roselee also took care of education reporter Mike Wilder when he was struck with cancer.

“One thing that always impressed me about Madison is how much he cared for people, especially the employees at the Times-News,” wrote Walter Boyd, a local historian Madison recruited to write about Burlington’s past. “I remember when Mike Wilder was ill, Madison went above and beyond to help him, and after Mike passed away Madison led the effort to honor him.”

When Madison came to the Times-News, Roselee came, too, and was one of our best until she went to work for Elon University. Madison eventually followed her and worked for Elon as a development writer. He always stayed involved in the community, especially the Friends of the Library and the Burlington Downtown Corporation, and kept writing about local issues on his blog.  

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“I feel like this is such a huge loss to this community,” Steele said.

This article originally appeared on Times-News: Friends, colleagues remember former Times-News editor Madison Taylor who died Thursday at 62