This is NOT goodbye

The first time I appeared in the newspaper, then The Winter Garden Times, was in March 1968 in the hospital news listing; I was just a few days old. Mind you, the last name was misspelled and I was identified as “Female Infant Guesinberry,” but still. I was destined for great things at our community paper.

My photo was in the paper when I found the golden egg at the Winter Garden Lions Club’s annual Easter egg hunt by the lake at Newton Park; I was probably 4 or 5. A picture of my friends and me ran on the social page announcing my 8th birthday slumber party, all of us in our nightgowns holding our favorite stuffed animals.

When I won the spelling bee at Dillard Street Elementary School, the newspaper photographed me in the library and ran the news. I also appeared in the paper when the West Orange Junior Service League announced its 1984-85 debutantes and again in the special section announcing the 1985 graduates of West Orange High School.

I took some “time off” to attend college and earn my journalism degree before returning to The West Orange Times in an official writing capacity in 1990. I was 22, full of AP Stylebook knowledge and ready to make a difference in West Orange County. This had been my dream job since eighth grade, and writing always has been my passion. Some of you have been following my work for 35 years.

After three-and-one-half decades, this full-time era has come to an end. I’m “retiring” — note the quotation marks — from the West Orange Times & Observer but will continue putting together the pieces of the weekly history page and keeping readers informed on West Orange County’s past through regular history stories. This week is the start of my freelance era.

I have worked at the paper for nearly one-third of its 120-year existence (that’s Amy math).

I have written close to 5,500 stories — your stories — in 1,820 issues of the newspaper, minus a few for vacations and maternity leave. If those issues were stacked on top of one another, the tower would reach more than 75 feet.

In trying to sum up 35 years of writing for a weekly community newspaper, I realize the most important fact — I couldn’t have done this without you, the reader. Your trust in me to tell your stories and my passion to keep telling them all these years has been a remarkable partnership.

I have reached the point in my career where I’m hitting full-circle moments. I’ve written stories about the children of people I featured in the early years of my time at the paper. I helped construct houses for West Orange Habitat for Humanity for seven years through its Women Build program, the same organization whose board I served on in its first several years of organization starting in 1990.

This job has afforded me some great opportunities. It was a fun time when Planet Hollywood was opening up. I met lots of stars who were donating items to the restaurant, including Patrick Swayze, Tom Arnold, Charlie Sheen and Danny Glover. I interviewed actors James Earl Jones and Leslie Nielsen. Universal Studios Florida invited me one year to dress up like a ghoul and scare guests during Halloween Horror Nights.

Some of my earliest projects were the Our Friends Overseas series starting in 1990 that connected readers with locals serving in the Persian Gulf War. Eight years later, I worked on a hardcover book, “When Forces Collide: Violence in the Darkness,” which documented the 1998 tornado that struck Winter Garden.

When I started at the paper, all press releases and news items were delivered by residents through the front door or by mail, our office had a darkroom for processing film and we put the paper together by hand.

I wrote about strangers and about people I’ve known my whole life. I wrote about former teachers and former classmates. I’ve interviewed every new pastor at my childhood church. I’ve told plenty of quirky tales of cows, roosters, possums and other animals.

We have been through a lot together, you and me. I have photographed your Daddy-Daughter dances and Mother-Son dances, I have been there for your children’s plays and musicals, I have taken photos of you at festivals and concerts and events. I have shared your GoFundMe pages and your new business websites.

My personal columns — many about my children’s escapades when they were younger or my own foibles — have made you laugh. Some of you let me know anytime my serious stories made you cry.

You felt my sadness when Tom Petty died, and then you really felt my heartache when I wrote about my parents passing away in 2017 and 2022.

I’ve even tackled the difficult stories you were brave enough to share with me and trusted me to tell: suicide, drug overdose, vape death and cancer.

You have read my coverage of the town of Oakland for more than 30 years.

If you know me at all, you know I detest change. There have been a few moments at the paper that I had to “suck it up” and deal — when we moved from a manual pasteup page layout system to a digital format, when the newspaper was sold, when we moved our office (I had spent 24 years at one desk in the same corner of the newsroom), when I was forced to adapt to a laptop (now I can’t live without one) and when we worked from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I have seen many co-workers come and go in 35 years. One thing you’ve discovered about me through my columns is I am a preservationist of history — a fancy way to say I save everything. For the last 25 years, our office has held a yearly Christmas test, and the questions and answers pertain to that year’s staff and little bits of information and funny stories gleaned from chatty coworkers all year. Of course, I kept every test. It’s like a Rolodex of employees through the years.

Our office team — who is more like family — has attended numerous West Orange Chamber of Commerce events together, as well as many fundraising dinners. My computer is full of photos capturing our fun outfits and table decorations. There are photo memories of staff road trips to Sarasota for our annual Observer meetings.

I’ve collected numerous writing awards through the years, but there are some that are incredibly special to me.

I won first-place Florida Press Association awards for both of my children in the Spot News and Serious Column categories. The West Orange Culture Keepers presented me with a Citizens of Distinction Award in 2012 for being a “community ambassador and the voice for many.” In 2019, I received a companywide award for “performance as an ambassador in the community.”

It has been fun looking through the newspaper archives and sharing on Facebook photos of your younger selves or your family and friends. It’s always rewarding when I see long-lost friends and classmates connect over my Throwback Thursday posts.

There are several stories that always remain close to my heart. One is the 2020 story of connecting a baby being placed for adoption with a Winter Garden family looking to adopt a baby. The other actually is a series of stories I wrote after interviewing local World War II veterans, many of whom shared with me intimate war details they never shared with their own families. I even had the honor of escorting one of the veterans to Washington, D.C., through the Honor Flight program.

Local history always has fascinated me, and some of my most interesting articles (in my opinion) have been in my Vanishing Communities series and Way Back When series. I love telling the stories of yesteryear; everyone has a story to tell.

My goal has remained the same for 35 years: Write stories that make a difference. Stories that matter to my family and friends, my neighbors and people I haven’t yet met.

The time has come to sort through (or pack away) my collections of press passes, lanyards, awards and thank-you notes; the pink hard hat and all seven T-shirts earned during Habitat’s Women Build; all the tchotchkes and mementos and reminders of your stories I’ve told.

This does not mean you are getting rid of me! Who would I be if I wasn’t writing about our community? I will continue to write history stories and document West Orange County history. I want to remind longtime residents of their past and give newcomers some perspective on the place they now call home.

But first, I need to thank some people:

Thank you to George, Anne and Andrew Bailey, who believed in this timid journalism graduate 35 years ago and took a chance on her.

Thanks to Mary Anne Swickerath, who was my first editor but, more importantly, a mentor and adviser who gave me the tools to grow as a writer. Thanks to the long-time core newsroom that included Mary Anne and also writer Kathy Aber and typesetter Gail Dressel. The four of us solved many of our personal problems during our years of lunching together five days a week.

Thanks to all of my coworkers who became friends and to those who were and are like family.

Thank you to Matt and Lisa Walsh for keeping me as a writer and an editor when Observer Media Group bought The West Orange Times in 2014.

And thank you to Mike Eng, who stuck with me when I was so protective of “my” community newspaper and passionately insisted certain things needed to remain in the new version of the paper.

I’m grateful for the experiences, the lessons learned, the stories shared, the people I’ve met and a career more fulfilling than I ever could have imagined.