To the Editor,
Thank you, Ridgefield. Thank you colleagues and mentors at The Ridgefield Press. Thank you hard working and well meaning public officials. Thank you selectmen and P&Z people and countless board and commissioner members. Thank you department heads and administrators and secretaries and town hall office workers. Thank you town workers from the snowplow crews to the pool lifeguards. Thank you town committee members. Thank you church pastors and temple rabbis. Thank you cops and firefighters.to
All of you have helped me make a rewarding career out of covering RIdgefield for 44 years. I believe I started at The Ridgefield Press in 1976, and under the guidance of Karl and Betty Grace Nash and Jack Sanders, learned about local journalism. With colleagues like Sally Sanders and Tom McCarthy and Tom Moran and Brian O'Donnell and Valerie Bannister and so many more, and more recently Steve Coulter and Peter Yankowski, it has been for me a lifetime of feeling like I was part something that mattered -- perhaps not to the world, but to the town, anyway. I have greatly enjoyed writing about Ridgefield and its good people.
When I think back on it all I remember Ridgefield, as a town, rallying around members in need — kids unfairly afflicted with dread diseases, families dealing with loss. And I think of a town working to protect its beauty — Main Street and the green surrounding hills — and preserve its identity as a town. It makes me proud to be a Ridgefielder and to have had a part in telling the town's story.
For all that, thank you all.
Macklin Reid, Jan. 4