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Hal says goodbye

A friend and colleague, Hal Sieber, has stepped down as editorial page editor of the city's black weekly, the Carolina Peacemaker.

Hal has won numerous N.C. Press Association awards for short, spicy commentaries that became his trademark and for his editorial alter ego of "Grandma," whose observations often sliced and diced the powers that be with homespun wit.

Hal has a poetic flair that I've long admired. That may be in part because he is a poet in his spare time.

Anyway, at age 74, Hal is moving on.

He has seen his share of controversy. For a while he was editor of the Peacemaker, a role that some questioned since Hal is a white man, the son of a German immigrant.

You'd swear at times that Hal at least thinks he's black. Yet he acknowledged the friction that came with his Peacemaker editorship in a 1989 interview with the News & Record's Tom Steadman, noting, "I can't change the whole history of society."

In 2002. Hal, a Franciscan, won the national Peace Prize of St. Francis.

Previously winners included Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Robert F. Kennedy and two popes.


Comments (2)

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Jerry Consiglio said:

I must state in my lifetime, one of the most influential people to ever call a true friend is Hal Sieber. He will live in my mind always as a true spirt and friend to mankind of all color.

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