When I moved to Greenwood in 1982, I expected it would be for two years. It turned into more than 42.
There are a lot of reasons why.
I liked the community, and I liked the job. I had a great boss, and I met the Mississippi woman who would become my wife.
As I write this on my last official day as the editor and publisher of the Commonwealth, I do so with mixed emotions.
On some of the hardest stretches at the newspaper, I daydreamed about the day when I would be old enough to retire — “old enough” being defined as eligible to draw my full Social Security benefits.
But as the actuality drew closer, I got if not cold feet, slightly chilly ones.
For all of this time, I had a mission in my career life. To be part of a group of talented, hard-working individuals in putting out a newspaper that this community could respect and appreciate. Even if it didn’t always agree with what we published, I hoped it knew that we would try our best to be fair and get both sides of a story, if there were both sides.
I am a little apprehensive about how I will adjust to retirement — or, more accurately, semi-retirement, as the plan is to work part time from home, writing some editorials for the Commonwealth and its sister papers and doing a little corporate work for our parent company.
I’ve read a couple of books in the past year about retiring. It goes smoothly for some, not so for others. The trick, as I understand it, is to still find a sense of purpose, even as your abilities diminish and you are no longer in such demand. I hope to figure that out.
When I was looking for my first reporting job and doing interviews mostly in the South, the larger papers told me that I needed to start at a small paper and work my way up. I had two main options, the Commonwealth and the newspaper in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a town that was created during the secret development of the atomic bomb in World War II.
I decided that Greenwood was the better option. It just seemed like a much more interesting town, although for the first few months I was here, many people, when they learned I had previously lived in Washington, D.C., had a hard time grasping why I would leave that for rural Mississippi.
It was one of the best decisions I ever made. Although it took me about six months to adapt socially (Betty Gail was a huge help in getting me over my homesickness for my D.C. friends), I enjoyed the job from the start. It was like going to school and being paid for it, even if $200 a week didn’t seem like all that much.
I was a baby-faced 24-year-old when I started. To try to add some gravitas to my appearance, I wore a tie to work every day. It’s a habit I continued, even after my graying hair made the wardrobe accessory unnecessary.
John Emmerich, the Commonwealth owner who hired me, took me under his wing. He told me that if I wanted to run a newspaper some day, I needed to learn more than how to operate in a newsroom. I moved over to advertising, then circulation, eventually doing most every job at the paper except running the press. It was great training.
When Mr. Emmerich died in 1995 from a sudden heart attack, it was like losing a second father, one to whom I felt closer than my biological one. I was honored when his son, Wyatt, my boss since, asked me to take over as the editor and publisher.
John Emmerich once told me that editors should move about every 10 years, because by then they would have ticked off everyone in the town and they would need a fresh start.
I lasted 30 as the editor in Greenwood, and I’m sure I ticked off more than my share of people during that time. A few even made sure I knew it, including one who memorably told me I was “going to hell with my eyes wide open.” I tried never to take the criticism personally. I considered it just part of the job, and my mother had raised me to have a thick skin — even though she would not have known that this would be an especially helpful trait for her youngest child and only journalist.
As mixed as my emotions are about leaving this job, they are equally mixed about leaving Greenwood. Betty Gail and I said that when I retired, we would move closer to our three grandsons, who live in Nashville. But we agonized for more than a year about that decision, before finally settling on Tupelo, where we have bought a home and moved in last week.
We didn’t want to leave Mississippi, and Tupelo is geographically well-positioned not only to Nashville (there is an inexpensive commuter flight between the two cities) but also to Betty Gail’s sister, with whom she is terribly close, in Batesville. Also, we are just 2 hours and 15 minutes from Greenwood.
We have been touched to tears by the many kindnesses shown to us in our final weeks in the city where we started off mostly living on love, raised our children and had our careers.
Greenwood has been good to us, and I hope we have come close to returning the favor.
It’s never easy to leave your home and the friends, neighbors and workmates with whom you’ve surrounded yourself.
I’ve done it now just three times in my life — when I went off to college, when I moved to Greenwood, and now when I move away from Greenwood.
Sometime Saturday, Betty Gail and I will pack up our car with the last of my office belongings and head east on U.S. 82. I’m not sure we will be able to say much to each other at that moment. The silence will say it all.
Contact Tim Kalich at tkalich-@gwcommonwealth.com.
