Key Highlights
- “If you played sports in Hunt County, I don’t care how long ago it was, David Claybourn remembers you.
- I am grateful for all that he has given to the community and our newspapers.
- I am sure we will still see him wandering around from time to time with a camera hanging from his neck.”Herald-Banner editor Kent Miller, who’s worked closely with Claybourn over the last three years echoes Chappell’s thoughts, particularly his knowledge of the Greenville sports scene.“We’re not just losing a good journalist, we’re losing an irreplaceable font of local sports history who I relied on heavily being someone who’s relatively new to Greenville,” Miller said. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementBut Miller said Claybourn was more than an employee and award-winning journalist.“David always took the time to stop by my office just to check and see how I was doing, not just as his editor but because he truly cared about what was going on in my life away from the newsroom,” Miller said.
- “In an always-stressful position like mine, those visits were a welcome respite from the scores of tasks staring back at me.”Claybourn came to the Herald-Banner in July of 1979 after starting his journalism career at the Bowie News in Montague County.
- He graduated from Del Mar College in 1975 with an associate’s degree and Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University-San Marcos) in 1978 with a bachelor’s degree. During his career at the Herald-Banner, Claybourn has been recognized by professional peers as an award-winning sports journalist from the regional to the national level – garnering multiple accolades from the North & East Texas Press Association, the Texas Press Association, Texas Managing Editors and the National Newspaper Association. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementPerhaps his biggest accomplishment came last year when he was named the Class A Star Sports Writer of the Year by the Texas Managing Editors.