The time has come to say goodbye.

Let me the bearer of my own bad news – I will be leaving the Gazette to move closer to my girlfriend, who is going to graduate school at Penn State University.

In many ways, it goes against what my mind tells me I should do. Though not a native, I have loved living in Maine since I moved here six years ago. “Why leave a place you love?” my mind asks my heart. 

Questions like that are the ones that get me into trouble with my girlfriend.

Truth be told, my heart really lies in State College, and more and more, I’ve felt the need to follow it. And while my girlfriend – until recently, a Maine resident – also loves the state and would love to go to school here, Penn State is actually paying her to be a graduate student there, making any point I might have had about her transferring to somewhere closer completely moot.

So, Pennsylvania-bound am I, carrying with me a year’s worth of happy memories and the hope I will one day return for good.

As I put my right foot out the door, I want to thank the hundreds of people I have interviewed through the past year. You have been indescribably generous for accepting me into your communities and allowing me access to your lives. 

As I put my left foot out the door, I thank all my co-workers at Mainely Media LLC, and in particular, my editor Colleen Marshall. Throughout an admittedly turbulent year – the sale of the company last year and the Gazette’s transition from covering Westbrook to the SAD6 communities – Colleen has been a rock of consistency in the newsroom. She deserves the highest praise for her leadership, especially in working with this young, very fresh reporter. 

There’s one last thing I’d like to mention before I sign off from the Gazette. It’s something I haven’t written about in my columns because, well, I didn’t really know how to go about it. It’s about my friend Alex Adam – the person who has probably had the most influence on me becoming who I am today. 

I met Alex in ninth grade and we became good friends. The year after graduating high school, Alex was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer. He spent more than three years battling the disease, fighting through two rounds of recurrences before he passed away in January 2007.

Alex was an incredibly talented writer and a real comic wit. In high school, he won several awards for his writing, and he was an English major at Princeton before being forced to postpone school for treatment. He had so much potential in his future, it hurts me to think of how much the world missed by his early death. 

While I can’t bring Alex back or write his masterpieces for him, I can use the example of his life as a guide for my own. I can seek to make the most out of every minute I have on this planet. I can hope to engage and inspire, enlighten and enliven the way Alex did to all who met him. 

It is Alex who leads me to look for more out of life, to explore every inch of the globe, every human possibility. It’s why I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2005 – a lifelong goal for both of us (he hiked a significant portion of the trail in 2002). It’s why I plan on hiking the Colorado Trail and kayaking the Maine Island Trail this summer. 

Alex, and the legacy of his impact on my life, is what gets me up every morning rededicating myself to giving my all in my every pursuit. Granted, it’s a hard lesson to remember early in the morning on deadline day after only a couple of hours of sleep. But it’s one that I hope will never cease its resonation in either my heart or my mind.

I leave Maine with fond reminiscences on the past year, and excited about what opportunities await me. Come what may, I am exuberant for what my future may hold. 

I wish each of you the same exuberance. 

– Cliff White