OPINION: This isn’t goodbye

OK, DeKalb County, I will get to the point quickly as I usually do: this is my final column for The Champion Newspaper and my final issue with the paper.

Incidentally, this is the second “final column” I have written for a newspaper. The first time was in 1990, weeks before graduating from Clemson University. At the time I was the editor in chief of The Tiger, Clemson’s Newspaper. I was done with my four years at The Tiger and was ready to make my way in the world.

Now, a quarter of a century has passed, and I have decided to leave The Champion, where I have spent the past five and a half years reporting the truth as best as I could. I have covered neighborhood meetings, high profile trials, school programs, county corruption allegations, community garden plantings, building fires, government ribbon-cuttings, police funerals, school graduations, and too many other topics to recall.

I have had the privilege of telling the stories of innumerable DeKalb residents and helping them with their concerns and documenting their celebrations.

It’s been a great run that I will never forget.

Thanks for reading my stories and columns. Thanks for giving me ideas for stories. Thanks for inviting me into your homes and neighborhoods and churches and lives.

I would like to thank my coworkers at The Champion for welcoming me, putting up with me, teaching me, encouraging me, criticizing me, listening to me, sharing my grief, and laughing with me and at me.

I will always cherish the memories.

I also am very grateful to my wife Deanna for always being there and always supporting me.

Although we in DeKalb have some challenges to address, I am proud to live, play and worship in DeKalb County, where I have been for most of my 21 years in Georgia. And I have been blessed to be able to work in this county for much of that time, as well.

Now I will be embarking on a new phase of my career–this time working for the county as a public information officer, still telling stories, still telling the truth.

So this is not really a goodbye, DeKalb. It’s a “see ya soon.”