How do you say farewell when a family member leaves home? That’s what we at the Staples World are wondering this week.

Tom Crawford is retiring, the first of the “family” to do so in a long time. Most of us have been working with Tom for 20 years and more. It’s going to be strange, to say the least, to come to work Monday morning and know he’s not going to be here.

The job of editor at a community weekly newspaper is more than just going to city council meetings and basketball games. A good editor becomes part of the fabric of the community.

Tom cares about people and he has worked to honor them, to tell their stories and make them part of the living history that is found in the pages of the newspaper. He’s been a good example to all of us.

After 20 years of working together, you get to know each other pretty well. We can almost complete each other’s sentences - well, all those old, bad jokes, anyway.

We’re going to miss listening to Tom argue with his computer on Tuesday afternoons when he’s trying to lay out the sports pages.

We’re going to miss Wednesday morning coffee chat after the paper goes to the printer.

Jan’s going to miss Tom’s eternal question

“What’s the local connection?”

I’m going to miss Tuesday lunches where Tom and I talk about the edition we’re working on and plan the front page.

Kathy’s wondering who’s going to eat the leftover goodies she brings

once in awhile because “Mikey will eat anything.”

Gary is still waiting for Two-Doe Tommy to tell him what mastodon tastes like. But he added that he’ll miss the teasing and joking.

Jan reminds Tom about his “private” parking spot for events at the high school gym.

Dawn will miss his mentoring skills and advice to a new reporter, except for the time he told her to stand at third base to take pictures of the softball game. She got booted off the field.

Mac said he’s sure he’ll notice that the coffee pot will stay full longer. He also said he could say something about how his stapler is always disappearing, but he won’t.

Kathy wonders how long she’ll be telling people Tom’s at “Two-Hour Tower” before she remembers he doesn’t work here anymore. (She said “It’s a blond thing, Tom.)

Linda will miss getting those baseball statistics and DNR stories late Tuesdays with the plea that “I need them this week.”

Jan will miss making a new folder every week for Tom’s Tuesday pictures, because he never turned in his camera until late Tuesday. I suppose this goes back to the days when we still developed our own film and printed all the photos in the darkroom. Old habits are hard to break.

I’ll miss arguing with Tom about letters to the editor. I am always conservative, not wanting the paper to get sued. Tom always argued in favor of letting the letters go with minor editing. Many times our newspaper association attorney broke our deadlock by telling us we were both right and helping us craft a compromise that the letterwriter could approve.

Kathy will miss the connection to his wife Patty because they are both originally from Pillager and this was how they kept up with Pillager trivia.

Jan will remember all the gracious rides to the Twin Cities with Tom and Patty.

It will be hard to see one of the “rocket scientists” go; now we have just one left and he’ll be next to retire.

Seriously, we’ll miss Tom, but we wish him well. We hope he gets the chance to travel - to New England, to Africa again, and to Great Britain to walk on Hadrian’s Wall. We hope he’ll have time to pursue all of his passions - Staples Historical Society and the Depot, Old Wadena Society, his church, and, most important of all, his family.

From Kathy, “Good Night, John Boy,”

From all of us, Happy Trails, Scoop!