I'm sitting here at the computer, trying to find the right words to say what I need to say. It's not really goodbye. Farewell doesn't seem right, either.
So let's start with this: I am leaving the Star Tribune, which has been my happy home for 19 years. My resignation is effective Tuesday, which means this is my final contribution to this fine newspaper. I am moving on to a new career chapter.
Everyone knows the newspaper industry has been rocky. But that doesn't make the decision to leave easy. I've been a newspaper guy since high school. It's the only life I have known. The daily newspaper stops I've made sound like a Bizarro World train schedule: Des Moines, Ottumwa, Cedar Rapids, Phoenix, Minneapolis.
A word that always comes to mind when I think of newspaper people -- especially my colleagues at the Star Tribune -- is integrity. The men and women who work inside these walls are defenders of fact and truth, and it is a mission they don't take lightly. I will try to carry their integrity with me to my next stop as a member of the Minnesota State High School League staff.
The key words in that previous sentence are "high school." I've been writing about high school activities for many years now, and it is my favorite place to be. The people I have met and the stories I have been honored to write will stay with me.
I've written about young athletes who went on to big things. One evening, I phoned the home of an 11th-grade quarterback in St. Paul. His mom answered the phone and said, "Oh hi, John; Joe's upstairs, I'll get him for you." And then I heard her holler, "Joe-Joe! Telephone!" Yes, that was Joe Mauer.
Before Trevor Mbakwe was photographed as part of an All-Metro basketball team, he politely asked me if he could (in order to boost the biceps) do a few pushups on the floor of our photo studio. Permission granted.
Long before Cole Aldrich was a basketball star at Kansas with talk swirling around his future as a first-round NBA draft choice, I sat in the Bloomington Jefferson library while a giggling Cole had me watch a cartoon on his iPod. We did an interview, but we laughed a lot, too.