A farewell to Fredericksburg

Well, folks, my time at The Free Lance-Star has expired. Today is my last of work here. Monday I will join the restarted Washington Times’ sports section as their Redskins beat writer. Indeed, this is a bittersweet occasion.

These farewell posts always are self-serving, but I’d appreciate it if you’d humor me. When you fully commit your life to something for so long, you need an outlet to express yourself when it’s all over. This seems as good as any.

When I began on the Redskins beat in 2009, my goal was to become a respected and reliable voice in the non-stop Redskins conversation between us media members and you readers. It didn’t matter to me that we’re a small paper 45 miles (or two hours in traffic) outside D.C. or that many of you had not ever heard of us.

I’m eternally grateful to those of you who came to this site and participated, whether by simply reading or by going a step further and posting a comment or emailing me. At some point—hopefully soon—Redskins coverage will continue in this space, and I have no doubt that the next Redskins beat writer will build on the modest foundation I tried to establish.

This is a difficult day because I am leaving some fantastic co-workers. The halls of 616 Amelia Street are filled with some incredibly talented journalists and some really wonderful people. There are too many to list here, but allow me to publicly express my appreciation to a sports staff that has made the last three-plus years a blast.

Editors Steve DeShazo, Justin Rice and Jeff Schulze are three of the best bosses one could have in any line of work. Fellow staff writers Adam Himmelsbach and Taft Coghill are terrific reporters (their awards speak for themselves) and even better people. Assistants Carden Hedelt and Tom Leiss, in particular, were supportive colleagues and friends. I look forward to beating many of those guys in one fantasy league or another in the future.

Thanks again to all of you for reading, and I hope to see you up north starting next week.

-Rich

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