Let’s cut a ribbon and party!

The staff here at the Sequim Gazette invites the community to a elated “office warming” shindig — and a celebration of our 50 years of serving the Sequim-Dungeness area — at an open house set for noon on Wednesday, Nov. 20, at our downtown office, 175 W. Washington St. Included is a Sequim-Dungeness Chamber of Commerce ribbon cutting.

For more than 45 years, the Gazette staff called the commercial space at 147 W. Washington home. Affectionately dubbed the “Gazette Tower” by some (looking at you, Pat Neal), that space served the needs of the company well. We moved into our new, main street-facing home in June, and we’d like to show off the new digs with our readers.

Additionally, the Gazette will have copies of the 50th anniversary special section to peruse, along with staffers to meet and greet. Enjoy some nibbles, too, as we look back at our first 50 years and look toward many more providing the news, features, advertisements and more you’ve come to expect from the Gazette.

As some of you know, the Gazette actually started out as The Sequim Shopper in January 1974 by Shirley Larmore and her husband Bob. The pair transformed it into a weekly tabloid newspaper, The Jimmy Come Lately Gazette, on July 10 of that year. With a banner proclaiming it to be “A friendly little newspaper in a friendly little town,” that first copy cost 15 cents.

In 1978, Shirley sold the paper to Leonard and Linda Paulsen; Leonard was publisher until his death in 1982, and Linda took over publishing responsibilities until selling it to Brown Maloney in 1988. The “Jimmy” be came the Sequim Gazette on April 4, 1990.

Maloney sold the newspaper to its current owner, Sound Publishing, in November 2011.

So long, farewell

It is with a heavy but filled heart that I say goodbye to this newspaper. After more than 24 years here — the past 15 as editor — and more than 1,200 editions of this weekly, I’m leaving the Gazette for a new role with a local organization; my last day here was Nov. 8.

Matthew Nash, a 15-year veteran of the Gazette, will handle interim editor responsibilities.

I can’t begin to describe what this job and the relationships formed — both with coworkers and everyone in the community — since my first day (April 25, 2001), so I’ll just have to say a few thanks here.

Thanks to my coworkers, past and present, who put up with a cub reporter right out of college who had — and frankly still has — an uneasy and often volatile relationship with the English language.

Thanks to all the community organizations and businesses who depend on the Gazette to get the word out about their events and festivals and various happenings.

Thanks to all the board and council and committee folks for answering my dumb questions and setting me straight on what’s going on in this town.

Big thanks in particular to the hundreds of community members who opened up their homes and their lives and let me tell their story. It was a privilege and and honor, something I tried to never take for granted. (Sorry, in the event I misspelled your name. Some of you, I know that happened at least three times.)

At last, and certainly not least, thank you to all the Gazette readers. Your support of local journalism is a significant part of what makes this such a vibrant, dynamic community. I urge you to keep reading! I know I will.