WILTON – No matter where his travels take him, and they’ve taken him far, Clint Stinchcomb said he always holds a special spot in his heart for Wilton.

Stinchcomb, 36, who remembers delivering newspapers for the Sun Journal at age 10 and swimming in icy Wilson Lake as a young boy, was recently named senior vice president and general manager for Discovery HD Theater.

Discovery HD Theater is the first high-definition network launched by Discovery, which also operates and manages the Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet and several others. The 24-hour network features fiction and nonfiction programming in categories like history, world culture, cooking, children’s entertainment and health and medicine, all in high definition.

According to Stinchcomb, the move from standard to high-definition television is as big a change as going from black and white to color. The picture, he says, is four to six times clearer. “It’s much more stunning, much more breathtaking,” he said.

Despite the excitement of his new appointment, which requires him to move from Charlotte, N.C. to the Washington, D.C. area, Stinchcomb will never forget the beauty of where he grew up and will always be a true New Englander in spirit, he said.

The son of Judy and and the late Larry Stinchcomb of Wilton, he spent his childhood in Franklin County, living for most of it in Wilton. A 1984 graduate of Mount Blue High School, Stinchcomb was active as a varsity athlete for the Cougars, running down the football field in the blue and gold, sprinting around the track and hitting the mat for the wrestling team.

He remembers coach Ray Caldwell telling him, “If you make a mistake, make it going 100 miles per hour.” Those words have stuck with him, he said, through his collegiate years at Dartmouth College where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in history, and then as he climbed the rungs of the television network hierarchy, which hit a high point last year when he was named in to CableFAX Magazine’s “100 Heavy Hitters” list.

“I offer that counsel, albeit a less colorful version, all the time today,” he said of his former coach’s wisdom “It was great advice that took me a while to appreciate. Essentially, if you move at a quick pace and make quick decisions, it’s much easier to change course and recover from the mistakes you do make.”

The father of three children, 6-year-old Clint, 4-year-old Kelly and 20-month-old Trey and the husband of Laurie said he is drawn to his hometown.

“I love the area so much,” he said of Wilton. “I just love going back, love it. I’ve traveled all over the place, but there is no place I’ve been that’s as special as Wilton, Maine.”

sdepoy@sunjournal.com