It’s time to enter a new phase of life called retirement

I’ve had the date circled on my calendar for several months.

December 20, 2024, is my last official day of work at El Defensor Chieftain.

It’s the date I decided to hang up my pen and pencil and officially retire from the newspaper business. Yup … you read that statement correctly.

I came to the southwest six years ago in November of 2018. I was the Iowa transplant who agreed to move to the crazy-hot southwest to cover the Socorro County community. Considering I had never, ever been to New Mexico, it was an exciting adventure embarked upon.

You may recall that I’m an Iowa’s farmer’s daughter, who fell in love with newspaper when my fourth-grade classmates and I toured our county’s daily newspaper.

It was so exciting to see the presses roll and the AP tickertape machine in the newsroom. My parents said I could not stop talking about it for weeks.

I started college at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa, as an accounting major. But after a year, I found it boring and switched my major to mass communications with a concentration in print journalism.

I graduated in 1982 with a B.A. in mass communications and minors in business industrial publications and art. My first paid gig was as news librarian and public records reporter at the newspaper I had toured when I was in fourth grade.

In the years since, I’ve been a reporter, editor, graphic designer, advertising sales representative, general manager, publisher and print plant manager.

Many times, throughout my four decades in the industry I’ve had dual roles in helping the company save money during the lean times or downturn in the economy. As a result, it helped me form a clearer picture of not only our readers’ needs but what advertisers need, too.

I also made it a point during her career to be active in civic organizations and community projects to help solidify the newspaper’s role as a community leader.

As a look forward to my final two weeks at El Defensor Chieftain, I can honestly say I’ve enjoyed every minute covering all the nuances to keep your community newspaper rolling during the good times and bad. I’ll admit some days have been better than others … the good has outweighed the bad.

After 46 years in this industry, I’ve become a bit of a newspaper junkie. I subscribe to 17 newspapers (print and online) to keep up on the latest news from back home in the Midwest, but in other states where I have lived, too. As a result, I don’t watch much TV (don’t care to be forced fed my news). I read newspapers and books … and I don’t think that will ever change.

Even though times are crazy, and a lot of unknowns lay ahead of us. Trust me, there is still a terrific group of El Defensor Chieftain staff members right here in your community ready to work for another 157 or so years, and they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Finally, next Thursday we’re hosting our annual holiday open house here at El Defensor Chieftain. It’s sort of a holiday/retirement party that is all mixed together into one event.

So … if you’re in our “neck of the woods” stop by on Thursday, December 19. We’re giving away some wonderful prizes plus I’d love to see and greet many of our readers before I officially say good-bye to Socorro and our surrounding communities.