Rosemary Peters (-- The Beacon)
By Rosemary Peters, Staff Commentary
Today is my last day working for The Beacon.
It's odd.
Beyond odd, it's scary and intimidating.
For four years now, I have dedicated myself to this newspaper. Beyond the newspaper, I have dedicated myself to everything it stands for: the righting of wrongs, the fostering of communication, the comforting of the afflicted and the afflicting of the comfortable.
Now that my time with The Beacon is closing, I am afraid it's going to feel like a piece of me is being forcibly removed - tantamount to how an amputee must feel when he or she loses a limb.
The one solace I have is that with these last four years at The Beacon, I have been blessed by God to be able to do the thing I love: interact with people.
Through interviews and articles, staff meetings and commentaries, page designs and headlines, chances are you and I have crossed paths, though you may have never even known it.
And though it seems like my time here is ending, the events of these last few weeks have shown me it's not.
For those of you who have been following The Beacon, our Twitter or our Facebook, you are more than aware that we are being removed from our office at the end of the year.
What some of you may not have been privy to are the vast letters, commentaries, phone calls, blog posts, emails and texts that have rolled in over the last two weeks from past Beacon staffers who are deeply upset by the decision.
The experience has provided me with a sense of calm among this storm. It has also reminded me that even though I will be leaving The Beacon, The Beacon will not be leaving me, just as it never left any of the staff members who were a part of this group before me.
I have learned an immeasurable amount of skills and life lessons during my time on staff. My time with this beautiful newspaper has defined me. There will always be a Beacon-sized hole in my heart, and my experience here is going to continue to define the way I live my life out in the big, bad world.
So after 96 issues with The Beacon, I think it is time for me to say goodbye. But before I do, I want to say thank you, because The Beacon and my time here would have been nothing without you, dear reader.
