I first met Wally Bowen while I was a reporter for the alt-weekly in Durham, North Carolina. I was covering broadband access issues, including municipal broadband, which was becoming a big political issue in our state. Wally was knowledgeable, thoughtful and generous with his time. Talking to him made my reporting considerably better.

Wally (pictured above left) was the co-founder and executive director of the Mountain Area Information Network (MAIN), a nonprofit that in 1996 began providing Internet service to a dozen rural counties in the mountains of North Carolina. Wally saw MAIN as part of a tradition of rural cooperatives that had spread electricity to the most remote areas of the country in the 1930s. He wanted to extend the Internet’s reach to the corners of the state that had been left behind.

MAIN is much more than an Internet service provider. It’s a community hub, broadcasting the Low Power FM radio station MAIN-FM and working with locally owned businesses and nonprofits in the area. Wally was an advocate for local self-reliance through local ownership of media infrastructure. He knew that economic development and civic participation depended on having meaningful access to the tools of communication.

Wally died on Nov. 17 at his home in Asheville, North Carolina, after suffering from ALS. His death came just weeks after he received the Donald H. McGannon Award from the United Church of Christ Office of Communication, Inc., for his dedication to bringing modern telecommunications to low-income people in rural areas.

When news of his passing hit Facebook this morning, the responses and re-posts made clear the influence he had among allies across the country, whom he worked with on Net Neutrality, local media ownership, broadband access and countless related issues.

Media Mobilizing Project Policy Director Hannah Sassaman said:

Wally Bowen was a dogged leader for community media in his beloved North Carolina home, and across the United States. For those of us who worked in the trenches of low-power FM radio and community wireless, he was the best possible storyteller as to why local communities deserved and required their own local voices to thrive and survive. Wally was difficult and kind and the same time, a great teacher and a great leader. I will miss you, Wally. Thank you for your vision and tireless work. Rest in peace and in power.

Sean McLaughlin, executive director of Access Humboldt in California, wrote:

Wally Bowen was a practical visionary and a friend of Access Humboldt. He imagined a better way for people to connect and share stories — building local media resources together with next generation broadband networks to serve people who live outside the mainstream. His work in Appalachia inspired Access Humboldt’s vision for broadband media access for the North Coast of California. We will never forget his contributions to community media and broadband access for all.

Christopher Mitchell, director of community broadband networks at the Minnesota-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance, wrote:

Wally Bowen was an inspiration in many ways. He worked tirelessly to improve Internet access in the rural mountains of western North Carolina and for media justice. When I began working in this area, Wally was already a champion of community networks and incredibly welcoming. Over the years, I always respected him and even enjoyed our occasionally friendly disagreements because I always knew we was thinking deeply about these issues and cared so very much about connecting people that the market was leaving behind.

My colleagues at Free Press are also mourning Wally’s passing today. As our president and CEO Craig Aaron said in this statement:

Wally Bowen inspired so many of us with his commitment to community and deep understanding of the transformative power of access to media and technology. He wasn’t just a dreamer; he was a doer who built networks, put radio stations on the air, and brought people together. He was an ally to Free Press, and we offer our condolences to his family, friends and the many people whose lives he touched. Wally will be missed.

In North Carolina, Wally’s work with MAIN touched many people who are working to build a better state — people in the rural economic development community; media makers who work with PEG TV and Low Power FM radio; people who advocate for broadband access for low-income communities and communities of color; and people in the nonprofit world who benefit from the support of forward-thinking, community-minded technologists like Wally. He understood the connections, and he forged and strengthened them. He was one of North Carolina’s leading lights.

Last month Monroe Gilmour, coordinator of Western North Carolina Citizens Ending Institutional Bigotry, accepted the McGannon Award for Bowen in Washington, D.C. During the ceremony, he read a statement from Bowen, who expressed gratitude that for the first time, the McGannon Award was “recognizing rural folk as a class of citizens underrepresented in mainstream media.”

In this 2012 interview, recorded after ALS had already begun to restrict his movements, the birdsongs emitting from the trees in his Asheville neighborhood provide an aural backdrop to Wally’s perspectives on technology, media, journalism, democratic participation and social change.

Reflecting on his own sense of home, he said, “There’s all kinds of information and knowledge we’ve lost because we don’t live in close-knit, cooperative communities like we did at one time. We’ve got access to a lot of information at our fingertips, but we don’t know who our next-door neighbors are sometimes. So there’s knowledge, important knowledge, in knowing your neighbors in times of danger, in times of political opportunity or challenges. Just the human contact of being in community is really important.”