Television news reporter Greg Barnes, who covered community fundraisers, car crashes and hurricanes in southeastern North Carolina for WTVD with equal enthusiasm for nearly 35 years, died Wednesday after an illness.

He was 73.

Barnes started the station’s Fayetteville bureau in 1983 and ran it until he retired in 2017, becoming a trusted source and a local celebrity. As additional reporters came to work at the bureau, Barnes taught them the ropes and gave them the advice he tried to follow when they had to stand in front of a camera: Just be yourself.

“Greg was the best,” said Rob Elmore, now president and general manager at WTVD. From 1998 to 2015, Elmore was news director of the station.

“Greg was passionate about his work and committed to the Fayetteville community, and he was a great performer,” Elmore said. Much of on-air news reporting is performing, Elmore said: being comfortable in front of a camera and explaining a situation with or without a script.

“He made something that is very unnatural look natural and easy,” Elmore said. “That’s a real talent.”

Gilbert Baez, now at WRAL, worked with Barnes at WTVD for 17 years and then competed against him covering the same region until Barnes retired. They both got their starts in radio, which Baez said was great training for when an anchor throws to a reporter in the field to summarize a day’s events or describe an ongoing situation.

“It’s one thing to cover a murder,” Baez said. “Those facts are laid out there. But when you have to cover the event as it’s going on, Greg Barnes was the best.”

Greg Barnes’ favorite stories

Barnes got his first on-air news job at age 15, when he was hired by WAGR AM radio in Lumberton, his hometown.

“Your ability to be in a radio booth with a microphone, an inanimate object, and make it sound like you’re talking to 1,000 people in a room, is a gift,” Baez said, and Barnes had it. “You bring that capability to being in front of a camera. It seems so natural, like that person is talking not to a camera. They’re talking to one person in a living room, and it feels like they’re talking to me.”

Viewers did believe Barnes was talking to them; when Baez posted about Barnes’ death on Facebook, more than 600 people responded, many as though they had lost a friend.

When he retired, Barnes told the News & Observer that some of his favorite stories to cover had been embedding with the 82nd Airborne from Fort Bragg – now Fort Liberty – when troops deployed overseas, and soldiers’ homecomings on the Green Ramp at the former Pope Air Force Base when they returned.

But he was well known for his weather coverage as well, especially when tropical storms or hurricanes threatened North Carolina’s southeastern coast.

A vast knowledge of the Carolina coast

The Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore might have flown into the region when the local forecast looked bad, but Greg Barnes would get there first.

Barnes had a vast knowledge of the Carolina coast, Elmore said; he owned a cottage at Oak Island, and when a storm looked imminent, he would take half a day off work to go board it up. He understood about wind speeds and currents and beach erosion, Elmore said, “and he had the ability to talk to viewers for literally hours on end. He could go on and on and on and it be meaningful and impactful.”

On the beat, Barnes generally always wore a coat, a tie, and a pair of cowboy boots, the boots being as useful as they were recognizable.

He is survived by his wife of 53 years, Lynne Barnes; daughter, Heather Barnes Barker and her husband, Tom Barker of Clayton; son, Joshua Lee Barnes of Lumberton; and five grandchildren.

Floyd Mortuary and Crematory is handling arrangements.