^{Caption: Charlie Gaddy ‘53 (left) and Gerald Owens both attended Guilford College. Charlie was anchor of WRAL-TV’s 6 PM newscast for more than 20 years. Earlier this year, Gerald was named one of the station’s 6 PM anchors.}

There are bonds you are born with, like your family and siblings, and bonds you choose, like friends and lovers. Then, there are the bonds that come along by accident, that somehow choose you. When Gerald Owens was hired as a reporter at WRAL-TV in Raleigh, N.C.,in 2002, station officials asked him to meet with Charlie Gaddy, their longtime legendary anchorman who retired in 1994. On the surface, nothing suggested the meeting would grow into anything more than a couple of journalists from different generations exchanging pleasantries and swapping war stories. Beyond journalism, the two didn’t seem to share much in common. Gerald is Black and was an up-and-coming reporter. Charlie is white and was the station's esteemed 6 p.m. news anchor for 20 years. But the two did share one bond: Guilford College. Charlie graduated from the College in 1953 and Gerald attended Guilford for two years and played basketball before transferring to the University of Maryland.

Two different lives. One shared love of Guilford. “The College gave us something to talk about,” says Gerald, who attended Guilford from 1978 to 1980 and earlier this year became the 6 p.m. co-anchor for WRAL — just like Charlie was.

“I mean, I thought I was an old-school Guilford guy, but Charlie had me beat and I loved hearing his stories.”

Hearing this, Charlie, who is 91, looks up and smiles. “Old school?” he cries in mock disbelief. “He must be talking about someone else because I’m not old.” And the two of them start laughing the way old friends do, sharing old stories.

Often those stories circle back to Guilford. Charlie remembers May Day, the precursor to Serendipity at the College. He remembers the maypole dances, skits commemorating spring and the Queen of May.

Gerald, 61, remembers the road trips in vans with his basketball teammates and the home games that generated so much excitement. “Guilford was a tough place to play,” says Gerald. “Everyone came out to watch basketball.”

That love and respect of Guilford has grown into a love and respect for each other. Charlie still watches WRAL’s newscasts and Gerald still asks Charlie for advice. One time maybe 10 years ago, Charlie came through the newsroom and Gerald told him how much he liked the tie Charlie was wearing.

A few weeks later a box showed up at WRAL for Gerald. You guessed it. Gerald still wears the tie, a reminder of a friendship whose knot only grows tighter.

Different Routes Into Journalism

Both men had a spark in them early for journalism. Charlie grew up in Biscoe, N.C., listening to Edward R. Murrow radio broadcasts in the family living room thinking he might one day want to be a news reporter himself.

Gerald delivered The Washington Post every morning throughout his Kensington, Md., neighborhood — but first reading all the stories on Watergate before dropping the papers off on his neighbors doorsteps. “There was something awesome about knowing everything in the news before you delivered it to your neighbors,” he says.

It wasn’t until after Guilford that Charlie and Gerald gave serious thought to broadcast journalism. After graduating from Guilford, Charlie became a page at the NBC affiliate in Washington, D.C.

A page did a little bit of everything in 1958. He gave tours, waited hand and foot on the broadcast stars, and delivered the interoffice mail every day. When most of the station’s on-air talent went on vacation one summer, they needed someone to make on-air announcements.

Charlie applied. He got the gig and later a full-time job at WRAL before taking over as the station's lead anchor in 1974.

To say Charlie was a natural in front of a camera is accurate but woefully inadequate. At one point in the late 1970s, the station had a 54 share, meaning for one glorious month, 54 percent of all the TV sets that were on in the Raleigh-Durham market at dinnertime were watching Charlie dispense the day’s news on what was then called "Action News 5."

“Those were good times,” says Charlie.“There wasn’t a story out there we were afraid to go after.”

Gerald’s foray into broadcasting was more circuitous. After Guilford, he was working in the lamination industry taking a few radio and television classes at the University of Maryland when he decided to apply for an internship at ABC News’ Nightline.

It was an unpaid internship but as Gerald likes to say, “you couldn’t put a price on working next to and receiving counsel from people like Ted Koppel, Barbara Walters, and Sam Donaldson.”

Looking back, Gerald and Charlie say their time at Guilford and the social justice the College instills in its students fueled their desire to work in journalism. “I mean, how could it not have that effect on you?” says Charlie. “This is a business where there’s a higher calling, to tell the stories of others and maybe change things in the world for the better. That’s what Guilford asks of its students.”

Gerald agrees. In the time Gerald spent at Guilford, the nation endured the hostage crisis in Iran and, closer to home, a deadly confrontation downtown in which five people were shot and killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party.

“There was a lot going on nationally and just down the street, but I remember Guilford as a place where we felt safe talking openly about the incidents and what we could do as a community to change the world,” he says.

“That’s the beauty of Guilford,” says Charlie. “It brings together people to give them a good education and maybe go out and make the world better. Those friendships stay with you forever.”

Gerald hears this, rubs Charlie’s shoulder and smiles. Sometimes those Guilford friendships come later in life when you least expect them. That’s the power of Guilford.“You made my job a lot easier,” he tells Charlie. “You made my world a lot better, too. In a way, you’ve been like a father to me.”

Charlie hears this and pats Gerald’s hand. “That’s nice of you to say,” he says. “I’m proud of you, too.”