Saying goodbye, and thank you

If this column were “The Fugitive,” it would be the episode where Dr. Richard Kimble catches the one-armed man.

In other words, the last one.

Twenty-two years ago, I transferred from the advertising department to the newsroom of The Alliance Review. I had maybe six bylines under my belt when I began to pester then-editor Susan Shea to let me write a column.

She said no.

But I kept asking. At least once a week. For months.

Finally, in what must have been a moment of weakness, she told me to go write one. Just one. I came back the next day with a draft, which she accepted. Then she told me something I’ve never forgotten: “You know, once you start writing a column, you have to do it every week. I mean, every single one.”

I took that advice to heart. In the last 21.5 years, I’ve written around 1,118 columns, taking maybe three weeks off. At 600 words a week (often more), that’s an estimated 670,800 words, or the equivalent of six or seven novels, a pretty good output.

At first, I only wanted to be funny. The late, great Sally Ailes, Spanish teacher extraordinaire at Alliance High School, once paid me the greatest compliment when she said I was a male Erma Bombeck. Mission accomplished.

My first column ran on Thursday, Aug. 16, 2001, and was a lighthearted look at first-day school photos involving my daughter, who was starting the fifth grade.

Three weeks later, terrorists destroyed the Twin Towers, and I realized I couldn’t write about funny stuff all the time. I started to alternate between serious and frivolous topics, trusting that readers would know the difference and come along for the ride.

In the decades since, I went from full-time reporter to editor to teacher, but I kept my hand in the newspaper business with various projects, including this column. I tackled issues as diverse as mowing the grass during a tornado, the Boston Marathon bombing, urinal cakes, white supremacy, various crises in education, and throwing a bag of poop onto my neighbor’s roof.

I created a few alter-egos (Dear Shabby, who wrote a conservative advice column; and Beatrice Bluenose, children’s book censor), wrote two columns that were published as comic strips, and basically did whatever I wanted with minimal editorial oversight. I was a lucky writer indeed.

So, before the orchestra plays me off, I want to thank a few people.

First, my appreciation to a murderers’ row of fantastic editors: the aforementioned Susan Shea, Michael Patterson, Sarah Reed Gold, Rob Todor and Laura Kessel, all of whom put up with my shenanigans and ran interference with readers who thought I’d gone too far, even when I’d gone too far.

Thanks to Georgette Huff, former Review columnist, who served as a weekly email sounding board for my drafts. You rock!

Next, sincere gratitude to my family, all of whom allowed me to use our interactions as raw material. My daughter, all grown up and a physical therapist in the area, still gets the occasional comment about things she said or did as a kid that found their way into this space.

A special shout-out to my long-suffering wife, Holly, who good-naturedly indulged my use of our marital life and graciously gave me time and space to work on this column for hours every week, all out of proportion with the amount of money it made. I love you, honey.


Finally, and most importantly, a huge thank you to all the readers who let me know by email, snail mail, social media and even the occasional phone call that they were still out there, reading and thinking, agreeing and disagreeing. I asked a lot of you as I veered in topic and tone from week to week and sometimes from sentence to sentence. Thank you for supporting local journalism, even when I made you mad enough to spit.

Hey, I’ve had the opportunity to do something I love for a long time. I’m a happy guy.

So, as they say in the biz:

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