“Every story has an end. But in life, every ending is just a new beginning.” —“Uptown Girls” (2003)

Thanks Tim and Darlene 
To the editor: 

To start, I want to say a big THANK YOU to Tim Curran and Darlene Vinson Curran for all the years of friendship, dedication and hard work … the blood, sweat and tears. 

The Mid-county Memo has been going strong for some 35 years, and somewhere in the middle (or closer to the beginning), Tim took a chance on a completely unknown person to take over the production of his “baby.” He relied on the word of a mutual friend who pointed him in my direction. Layout, design and pre-press production is, after all, my trade. At the time, I lived in the great state of Texas (and now Michigan). We grew together in the process; we cussed and discussed various things; but the one mutual thing we had in common was the fact that we wanted the Memo to look the best it could look. We wanted to make sure that the many businesses that took advantage of advertising in the paper were well represented in both message and design. 

Because of the Memo, I have been able to work with some amazing people, including business owners in your great neighborhoods. Through the years, I had the pleasure of getting to visit with a few of them via telephone and, certainly in later years, through e-mail. It would be my hope that you, the Memo reader, will continue to support these places—places like these:

• Bridge City Taproom. Trust me, I have seen just about anything and everything this man can cook or bake, and when I come to Portland, his will be the first eating establishment I hit!

• Brown’s Point S Auto & Tire Store (in earlier days, “Brown’s Tire”) … top-notch professionals.

• Elmer’s Restaurant, the second place I will hit for food!

• And, if I happen to find someone willing to grill me a piece of meat, you can bet I will be visiting Gartner’s Meat Market!

There are countless other people I have had the pleasure of working with throughout the past 20 years, and to each of them, I just say THANK YOU for trusting me with your ad designs through the years. Please keep supporting your community businesses and the people who run them. I have always said that “we are nothing without our family,” and if anyone knows me well, they would know that I add to that “and family does not always mean you have to be blood related!”

Tim and Darlene (and all the others who have edited and written for the Memo) have put their heart and soul into this paper for a very long time. It has been their passion. Every single month when I would get the stories and the departments (Calendar, Memo Pad, etc.) from them, I would open the files and start placing and formatting them in the actual paper and just sit in amazement at the amount of work involved. It’s not an easy task. As soon as they’d get one month put to bed, they had to start on the next. If you managed to squeak in a couple of days here or there to do something for yourself, that was a bonus! When you see them, all of them, thank them for delivering news to your doorsteps for 35 years. 

I think for me, the saddest part about knowing this is the last issue of the Mid-county Memo is that, in a day when you read and find everything online, there are times when a person actually wants to hold something tangible in their hands: a newspaper, a magazine, a book. It seems that has all but become a lost art, in a sense. Please don’t let that happen. While I have nothing against downloading a book on a Kindle or another device, take time to pick up an actual book or paper … don’t let the printed pieces go by the wayside. 

I’m rambling, so let me just say again: thank you, Tim and Darlene, for everything. I wish you both the absolute best, and just know our friendship does not end here!

To everyone else, be kind to one another. Be grateful. And love your families (blood related or not).

Thank you for the memories!
Debbie McWilliams Fry