This article originally provided by The Charleston Gazette

February 16, 2008

Journalist was native of Shoals

Rudy Abramson, 70, dies at Virginia home

By Michelle Rupe Eubanks
Staff Writer

Rudy Abramson, Florence native and co-founder of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, died late Wednesday from head injuries sustained in a fall at his Reston, Va., home. He was 70.

Abramson, A Central High School graduate, grew up milking cows and mucking stalls at Cloverfield Dairies, a working dairy farm, alongside his first cousin, David Abramson, and best friend and now deceased Florence attorney, Don Holt

“You know, (Rudy’s) dad had 19 brothers and sisters, and Rudy was one of two children, so there was a whole passel of them,” David Abramson said. “But he was a small guy, and he’d get into fights that he wasn’t big enough to finish, so Don would step in and help him.”

“Those early years, set amid the backdrop of the Southern farming landscape, paved the way for Abramson’s future in journalism. That career began as a journalist at the Nashville Tennessean newspaper, after his 1958 graduation from the University of Mississippi.

From covering the space program and historic moon landing to Vietnam War policy debates and the Nixon impeachment hearings, Abramson’s byline appeared on some of the biggest stories covered by the Washington, D.C. bureau of the Los Angeles Times.

It was his coverage of a coal slurry spill in eastern Kentucky, however, that paved the way for what would become the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based at the University of Kentucky.

“He believed that people in small towns deserve the same caliber of journalism that people in big cities get,” said Al Cross, director of the institute.

While covering the environmental devastation in Kentucky, Abramson was bothered by what he saw as the “devolution of local papers and how no one was giving coverage to this event, which was bigger than the Exxon Valdez oil spill,” Cross said.

Since the institute’s founding in 2004, the mission of the organization, while still serving Appalachia, has expanded its scope to include national issues.

In addition to the institute, Abramson also co-authored the “Encyclopedia of Appalachia” with Jean Haskell. He’s also the author of “Spinning the Century: The Life of W. Averell Harriman, 1891-1986,” and “Hallowed Ground: Preserving America’s Heritage,” which was about the Piedmont region of northern Virginia, where some of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War took place.

At the time of his death, Abramson was writing a biography of Harry Caudill, a Kentucky lawyer and environmentalist.

The Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.