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NETPA honors Gary Borders with Sam Holloway Award

SULPHUR SPRINGS — Gary Borders, an East Texas journalist and editor for more than 40 years, was awarded the Sam Holloway Award at the 2017 North & East Texas Press Association convention.
During his career, Borders served as editor and publisher of newspapers in Longview, Lufkin, Nacogdoches, Mount Pleasant, San Augustine, Cedar Park and Junction City, Kansas. He also taught journalism at Kilgore College. 
He works now as a freelance writer, editor and photographer. You can see his work at garyborders.com. He has written for World Wildlife magazine, Texas Monthly, Texas Observer and Airstream Life.
He began writing a column in 1982 and without fail has written at least once weekly since, though he says there are quite a few he would like to retract. The New York Times News Service distributed his column nationally from 1995 through 2009. His pieces have been published in the Detroit Free Press, Miami Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Palm Beach Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and — his personal favorite — the Maui News.
Borders has published two collections of columns, the “Loblolly Chronicles” in 2010 and “Behind and Beyond the Pine Curtain” in 2005. The University of Texas Press published “A Hanging in Nacogdoches” in 2006, his account of a brutal murder in 1902 in the state’s oldest town and the trial that followed. He is currently researching another book. He is also threatening to release another collection of columns.
Borders served as president of the Texas Daily Newspaper Association in 2009. He also does a weekly radio column on Red River Radio.
Borders and his wife, Dr. Julie Teel-Borders, a professor at LeTourneau University, live in Longview with their daughter, Abbie, a freshman at LeTourneau. He also has two grown daughters, about whom he has been writing columns since Ronald Reagan was president. They have long ceased to be embarrassed about it, though Abbie protests occasionally.
The Sam Holloway Award has been given by the North and East Texas Press Association since 1958, when it was presented to its namesake at the convention in Tyler. Holloway was one of the founding members of the NETPA in 1926 and served as its second president in 1927. It has been awarded each year since 1958 to an outstanding NETPA member and journalist who has gone above and beyond the call of duty in support of the association while also upholding high standards of journalistic integrity and service to the community.