Bye-bye, Bob

Bob Withers, longtime reporter, copyeditor and rail fanatic, retires today. He's been at the paper 38 1/2 years, or about 10 years longer than I have.

We had our going-away party for Bob yesterday. He's already cleaned out his desk. All that's left for him to take home are the cushions on his chair.

Bob is one of those guys who has a special expertise that we will miss. He was in the National Guard for a while, making him the only veteran on our reporting staff. He knows a lot about trains and religion and other things that mean a lot to our readers.

I look around the newsroom today and I see a lot of young faces. We have some people with areas of expertise. To choose one, Dave Lavender knows a lot about music. But too many people don't have the life experience to connect with our readers. That's one funny thing about this business. Most of our readers are older than the median age of our area while most of the people who put out the paper are younger. It's not as bad as on local TV news, but it still bugs me.

There's no reason to have a newsroom full of old folks. But the policies of this company and others push experienced people out of the way. The late Molly Ivins once mentioned a former colleague who left daily journalism for a p.r. job at a college simply because it paid the money that most newsroom jobs don't.

We still have experience. I've covered stories on just about every beat at the paper, and I can tell you the quickest way to get from Salt Rock to Argillite and from there to Pedro. I remember many of the big stories of the past 30 years.

Sportswriter Dave Walsh was a member of the Young Thundering Herd. Sports editor Rick McCann has been at the HD almost as long as me. Lawrence County reporter Dave Malloy should celebrate (?) his 34th anniversary at the HD soon, if memory serves.

But I miss talking to old timers like Fran Allred and Dave McGuire and Jim Casto and Harry Fisher and Lee Bernard and Frank Altizer and Jack Burnett and Tim Massey and others. And there were Lavonda and Brenda and Patty, who kept me up to date on what was really going on around here. And I remember some good if strange conversations with Dave Peyton.

Sometimes being in the newsroom is like walking through the small town where I grew up. I remember the old faces, the old basketball court, even my father's cows, but none are around today. Even some of the kids I grew up with and who were maybe two or three years older than me are long gone. I see too many familiar names on headstones in the cemeteries where my parents are buried.

I do enjoy working with some of our talented youngsters. Not to slight anyone, but I have a lot of conversations with Bryan Chambers and Curtis Johnson about stories they're working on, and when I hear about something going on in the schools I try to pass it along to Rachel Gensler.

The hard part is knowing where to draw the line between offering advice and tips the kids want to hear and being the old guy with all the old, boring stories.

Anyway, happy retirement, Bob Withers. If you ever get around to reading the card we all signed, you might notice I had my comment translated into Klingon. It plays Bob's twin loves of Star Trek and food. It says, "Qapla' batlh je. Naq duq yuj da'pol?" In English, that comes out to "Success and honor. Where's the chocolate?"