Long-time editor remembers Contrary Mary

By Annette Jordan

Retired Editor, The Courier-Tribune

It was February 1981, my first month as a reporter for The Courier-Tribune. Fresh out of college, green as the center seed of a cucumber, I was equal parts nervous and excited about the career that lay ahead of me.

The reporter I was replacing on the Montgomery County beat, Norma Robinson, had stuck around long enough to introduce me to key folks.

One of the first people she sought out was Mary Perkins, public relations director for Montgomery Community College in Troy.

“Mary knows everyone,” Norma told me. “She’ll be a great source of stories for you.”

Mary turned out to be that … and more. Much more. She became not only a trusted mentor to this greenhorn, but a friend, too.

I soon learned what everyone else knew about Mary.

Ever the genteel Southern lady, as befitted her upbringing in South Carolina, Mary was not to be underestimated just because she spoke in the honeyed tones of the Palmetto state. She was a force to be reckoned with. She demanded respect. She demanded excellence. She stood tall — in stature and standards.

A few years later, in 1997, when a reporting position opened at The Courier-Tribune, Mary seemed like a natural fit.

By that time, Mary Perkins had become Mary Anderson, marrying the distinguished and nationally renowned head of the gunsmithing program at MCC, Gene Anderson, who became as beloved a member of the newsroom family as Mary did.

Initially, Mary’s primary duty for the newspaper entailed covering the news in Montgomery County. She wrote about the schools, county commissioners, local town boards, law enforcement agencies and the courts.

For anyone else that should have been enough. But Mary, a juggernaut of energy who embodied the old saying about idle hands are the devil’s workshop, wasn’t content.

She penned columns, beautifully crafted, always wise and sometimes humorous takes on life that garnered numerous writing awards.

My all-time favorite was one she wrote about dealing with a relative’s Alzheimer’s. It won a N.C. Press Association award that year. But it did more than that. It brought attention to a heart-breaking disease and did so with both humor and the kind of honesty that’s very rare these days.

The best line?

One day Mary was tidying around the house when her relative handed her money. “Here’s your tip, dear,” she told Mary, obviously no longer recognizing her kin, instead mistaking Mary for the hired help.

Without missing a beat, Mary said, “Thanks, dear” — and promptly pocketed the money.

In addition to columns, she added the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office to her list of duties, and began sitting in on high-profile trials in Randolph.

A stickler for details, Mary pursued leads with the persistence of a bloodhound, embodying a rare combination of tenacity, and yes, kindness, that earned the trust of many a lawman, attorney and judge who did not so easily trust media types.

She’s the only reporter I’ve known who demanded the kind of loyalty that made state troopers personally deliver their wreck reports to her home in Biscoe.

Mary’s stories were among the most well read in the paper.

I know this because of technological advances that tracked such things.

Like many of us old-schoolers, Mary did not quite cotton to the newfangled ideas our corporate owners pushed — Facebook posts, website statistics, Twitter and such.

At one particular staff meeting, I announced reporters would be required to tweet twice daily.

Up curled her lip and off she went, on how that was a complete waste of time, didn’t reporters have enough to do, now they had to stop in the middle of covering a trial or a wreck or a homicide or a board meeting and send out a silly 140-character piece of nonsense.

“Oh, Mary, stop being so contrary,” someone said as her rant wound down.

Thus a nickname was born. She even titled her column under the heading, 

“Contrary Mary.”

Yes, she grumbled. She muttered. She groused.

And then she tweeted the most fascinating, blow-by-blow accounts that earned more followers than anyone else in the newsroom.

Mary always spoke her mind without apology — then would take a deep breath and soldier on, producing first rate, always first-class, work.

She did that, while mothering everyone on the staff, until the day she retired in November 2015.

Post-retirement, Mary’s latter years were not so kind. She lost Gene in a tragic fire, her daughter to an untimely death and her health to a series of medical setbacks.

Still, the fiercely loyal, genteel Southern lady with a spine of steel held her head high.

I pray she is at peace now … but not peacefully resting on her laurels.

No way.

She’s making sure everyone is dotting all their i’s and crossing all their t’s — and doing so in honeyed tones that could make an angel melt.

Editor’s note: Mary Lou Finch Anderson died Dec. 18 at her home in Biscoe. She was 84.