CARLTON FLETCHER: Saying farewell doesn’t get any easier

But you left me far behind. Left me far behind.

— Candlebox

And now, in this perplexing fraternity/sorority whose membership establishes an immediate and healthy love/hate relationship, there are two.

With beloved librarian/researcher/writer/mother confessor Mary Braswell’s retirement that officially started Friday, that leaves Terry Lewis and me as the lone remaining Albany Herald journalists with ties to the era that, in today’s parlance, could only be referred to as old-school.

(No offense to Cheryl Frakes, Bill Strickland and Phil Cody, who have all done more than their share of time here at the corner of Washington and Pine, but it takes a special kind of crazy to work in a newsroom long-term. Bill probably gets that more than the others; that’s why he made the intelligent move from reporter to IT dude.)

We’ve eaten too many of these sad farewell cakes at The Herald over the past few months: First Danny Carter’s, then Jim Hendricks’, now Mary’s. For Terry and me, who’ve kind of hunkered down in the trenches so to speak, (How’s that for a war metaphor, Spencer?) we have had the joy of seeing others from our Herald heyday return for the gatherings … Dee Maret, Vicki Harris, members of our outgoing comrades-in-arms’ families, community folk with whom the departing have forged special relationships. But it’s a hollow kind of joy.

I think Mary’s departure — and, trust me, if anybody deserved a nice send-off, it was Mary … we should have had Mayor Dorothy Hubbard canonize her or something before she walked out of here — may have been the hardest on me because now I’m semi-in-charge of a staff that must find a way to do all those things she did — many of them behind the scenes — and did so well.

Carter’s retirement — and, by the way, if I were ever going to live long enough to retire, I would want to do it the way Danny has … Carter does retirement right — was, in its way, devastating for me because I literally learned 75 to 85 percent of what I know about this business from him. Carter and I have almost as many Tifton Gazette stories to tell as we do Herald stories. When you spend a good bit of time working with some of the loonies who choose to work in this business at two separate newspapers, you will never lack for stories to tell. (And, yes, a lot of them are about us.)

But when Carter left, Hendricks was here.

Hendricks — who, by the way, appears to be thriving at the Museum of Art … thanks, Paula, he needed that … and, yes, we have grudgingly forgiven you — never lost the requisite fire that brought him to this business in the first place. But when there was nothing left for him to accomplish after all those years on the job, he chose new pursuits that allowed him more time with the family he loves so well.

When he left, I got a very quick lesson on why he had become the backbone and, yes, the heart and soul, of this newspaper. But at least I had Terry and Mary to commiserate with.

Now it’s Terry and me.

I got the feeling at Mary’s gathering Friday, seeing Carter, Hendricks and Vicki again, that they were eyeing me with looks that said, “You’re next.” Maybe so. At some point in today’s fast-paced world, there’s not a whole lot of room left for old-school. All that “experience” saved up over the years becomes less and less of an asset as younger, more eager practitioners “discover” all the new ways to make everything better.

As Earth, Wind and Fire sang, “That’s the way of the world.”

But I’m not going to be looking over my shoulder anytime soon, worrying about who might be waiting in the wings for me to step aside. Because the one thing Terry and I — and Carter and Hendricks and Maret and Braswell and all the other folks who were here before us — learned is that it doesn’t matter if you’re old-school, new-school or even middle school. There’s only one way to do this job the right way.

Yes, we fall short often. But know that our end goal is always to give you, the reader, as unbiased a look at an issue as we possibly can.

Of course, our job will be a little more difficult going forward … as we do it with a hole in our souls that just got a little deeper.

Contact Carlton Fletcher at [email protected]. Follow on Twitter @ABH_Fletcher.