Bryan DeVasher during a visit to New York City's High Line park last spring (Photo by Jenny Cloninger DeVasher)
The late William Bryan DeVasher was a “journalist’s journalist,” according to a former colleague at VCU’s Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture, where DeVasher taught copy editing courses for the last six years, until he died suddenly last week.
“Jovial and empathetic are the first words that came to mind,” VCU senior Zachary Joachim says of his former professor.
DeVasher, known by his middle name, Bryan, died from cardiac arrest on Oct. 30 at Sentara Williamsburg Regional Medical Center. He is survived by his wife of 21 years, Jenny, and the couple’s son and daughter, William and Margaret, both 15 years old.
But the 54-year-old’s legacy as a reporter and editor lives on beyond the myriad of publications he worked for across the state and in the students whose lives he touched and careers he helped shape at Virginia Commonwealth University and Hampton University, and a new scholarship fund in his honor will help ensure that.
“He was smart and irreverent,” says Jeff South, an associate professor at VCU’s Robertson School who spearheaded the effort to install a scholarship in his colleague’s memory. “He could really call out BS when he saw it in print or online; he was a really great communicator when it came to distilling complex ideas into headlines, tweets, news stories, and he really helped students, I think, understand the direction of journalism.”
Late last week, after students, friends and colleagues across the state learned of DeVasher’s death, South and other current and former colleagues came up with the idea to start raising funds for a memorial scholarship in DeVasher’s name.
South launched a GoFundMe campaign — which raised more than $1,400 in three days — but as of Thursday morning, he had withdrawn the funds and given them to VCU at the advice of the university’s development office, to start a seed fund for the scholarship.
The university will now promote the fundraising effort through a separate platform, with the intent of raising roughly $25,000 so a promising student can be awarded at least $1,000 annually, in perpetuity, South says.
“Exactly how [the scholarship will] be framed we're not exactly sure — we'll talk to Jenny, Bryan's widow, and others about how the wording might be for the scholarship and how to best honor him and his legacy,” South says, noting he is unsure of whether the fund will be ready in time for the next school year, depending on how quickly donations materialize. “The generosity of his students and people who knew him was evident because in three days we managed to pull together $1,415, and that was just with seat-of-the-pants promotion.”
The funds raised over the weekend are perhaps indicative of what many of DeVasher’s colleagues already know: He had a huge impact on his students and his communities.
DeVasher’s memorial service in Williamsburg on Wednesday drew students, staff, friends and co-workers from various publications at which DeVasher worked throughout his decades-long career as a journalist — including the Daily Press in Newport News, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Williamsburg-Yorktown Daily.
VCU's student-run newspaper, the Commonwealth Times, dedicated a page to Bryan DeVasher's memory. (Photo by Jeff South)
At the entrance to the King of Glory Lutheran Church, there was another tribute to DeVasher’s lasting legacy: Perched on an easel near the doors was a framed copy of page 13 of this week’s Opinions section in the student-run independent newspaper at VCU, the Commonwealth Times.
The page was dedicated to the memory of a teacher and friend to years of journalism students, many of whom now work for the paper or have moved on to take positions at prominent local publications such as the Times-Dispatch, where DeVasher worked until April 2017, when he was among 13 newsroom staffers who were laid off.
“He didn't hide from students the difficulties of being a journalist” in this digital age, South says, “and I think they really appreciated that; they know this is a tough profession, but that it's also an immensely rewarding profession, and I think he helped students see both those aspects of their prospective careers.”
Joachim is executive editor of the Commonwealth Times, and was in DeVasher’s copy editing class at VCU when his professor lost his job at the Times-Dispatch. He remembers the impact it had on him at the time.
“It was definitely pretty depressing for everyone in class — not just feeling for him personally, but as all aspiring journalists to see a big publication like the Times-Dispatch lay off such an experienced journalist,” Joachim remembers, “But he was very comforting in that sense, like he was throughout the class. He would always tell us to chase our dreams no matter what we saw happening at the professional level, and that he believed in all of us and reminded us of it often … he really cared about our careers and our futures after we left his classroom, so that's what I think stuck with all of us about him.”
Bryan DeVasher in the newsroom at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, where he worked as a design editor, breaking news reporter and videographer. (Photo by Marcus Messner/VCU Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture)
Joachim says the idea to honor DeVasher in this week’s student newspaper came about among the staff organically, and seemed like the right thing to do in light of so many students on staff having known him personally.
But it seems his impact was more than just as a teacher — Joachim says DeVasher, who insisted on his students calling him “Bryan,” really brought the mundane aspects of the profession (such as copy editing) to life — interspersing his classroom time with anecdotes from his daily life and theirs, or analyzing the day’s top stories and explaining what he would have done differently, or what he thought the story did well, at the beginning of each period.
“He talked about [his kids] a lot in class, and was incredibly proud of his family, so much so that he wanted to share the daily conversations they had or something funny that happened in his family life every day with his students,” Joachim says. “I think to him, his students were — to an extent he felt like they were a part of his family and he felt that paternal desire to share what was going on with his students and to try to get their perspectives on that — I always loved that.”
Joachim, an English major and sports writer who will graduate in December, recalls other instrumental lessons DeVasher imparted on him and his peers, too, as they prepared to enter into the professional sphere.
“To be able to pick apart copy, but at the same time really work transparently with the writer, and not make excuses for mistakes but understand why mistakes are made,” he says. “That attention to detail ... but at the same time, having the willingness to have compassionate discourse.”
For example, Joachim says if he was late to class or missed a class, rather than chastise him, DeVasher would pause to make sure everything was OK.
“He would just ask you about how you were,” Joachim recalls. “It was, 'Hey, what's going on in life? Is there anything you want to talk to me about? I want to be here as a resource for you in your personal life if you want me to be,' and that meant a lot to me, and I know it meant a lot to a lot of his students — just that desire to have a face-to-face conversation with us about life inside and outside the journalism classroom.”
South, too, still has not adjusted to the shock of “essentially a permanent member of the faculty” being gone.
“It’s just hard to believe that he's no longer here,” South says. “We didn't do anything big to try to get the word out [about the scholarship], but students and others really want to do something on his behalf, so I think that there's lots of people that want to create a lasting way to honor his life and that this would be one way to do that.”
Donations to the scholarship fund can be made online or by writing a check to the VCU Foundation for the DeVasher Memorial Scholarship. Checks can be mailed to: KaCey Jackson, Blanton House, 2nd Floor; 826 W. Franklin St., Box 842019; Richmond, VA 23284.
“It was inspiring to see how many people attended the service for him [Wednesday] — from all walks of life, I mean, reporters, Boy Scouts he'd worked with, friends from when he was growing up — childhood friends from Sunday school,” South says. “He was just a great guy and he'll be greatly missed.”
