I’d like to think by now that most of our readers out there have seen the iconic 1994 Oscar award-winning movie “Forrest Gump.”
When I thought about how I would lead off my final Gazette column, I thought of this scene: Forrest, played by legendary actor Tom Hanks, in his classic “spur-of-the-moment” style, takes off on a run and then just keeps on running.
Goes clear across the darn country growing a beard in the process, becoming a folk hero, garnering all kinds of people running behind him.
All of a sudden, out of nowhere, in the middle of a Utah desert, he stops running – pauses, turns around and tells everybody, “I’m tired, I think I’ll go home now.”
Well guess what folks, according to my best calculations, after 1,785 issues of the River Cities Gazette since we put out No. 1 in 1985, “I’m tired and I think I’ll go home now.”
I’ve been spending the last year or so looking for a “jumping off” point and finally handed Tom Curtis my letter of resignation last May, letting him know that August would be my final issue.
As it turns out, this August issue will be a collector’s item. That’s because IT IS the final issue. As print newspapers go, the Gazette has “hung in there” for a very long time, thanks mainly to our loyal readers and advertisers in the River Cities area. But all roads eventually come to an end and with rising costs of printing and mailing this paper out (and at the same time trying to hold down our ad rates), it was time to pull the plug.
However, I will let everyone know that the PLUG has not been pulled entirely. Not in the least.

Thanks to the efforts of Tom’s son, Assistant Publisher Brad Curtis, only the print version of the Gazette is disappearing. THE GAZETTE WILL CONTINUE AS AN ONLINE WEBSITE!!
Brad, along with his partner Ray Anton (you remember Ray from Ray’s Guitar store in VG?) have worked diligently over the last six months to try and get the website up and running and are closing in on a launch date soon, tentatively scheduled for Oct. 1 and be sure to visit the new website, www.rivercitiesgazette.net. (See Brad’s column on page 6). Best of luck to them moving forward and please support their new venture.
With my “financial ducks” in a row and about to turn 67, it was time for me to kick my feet up and relax a little while Tom Curtis, 10 years my senior, was in need to do the same. In addition, with my wonderful and beautiful life partner Maria Romero waging her daily and courageous battle with MS (Multiple Sclerosis), my role as her caretaker has become even more demanding on my time.
I was a post-divorcee drifting aimlessly through a vast ocean of relationships when I met her 16 years ago and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t thank the Lord for bringing us together. She is my rock and the center of my Universe.
With all of that said, I’m not going very far.
Even though I’m a resident of North Bay Village, I’ll still be around Miami Springs, hanging out at my usual spot, Roman’s Pizza and also, now being a proud member of the Miami Springs Lions Club, I’ll be at the Swallow Drive clubhouse as well with a big shout-out to my fellow Lions!!!
Having been a freelance sportswriter covering high schools for the Miami Herald for the last two-plus decades, my plan is to continue to contribute in that area. That is, as long as the Herald still hangs on to a freelance budget which has dwindled mightily in the last 10 years.
Thanking people can always be tricky at times like this because inevitably somebody gets left out so we will just keep this in-house to my family and our “Gazette family.”
We start first and foremost with all of you folks out there reading this. THANK YOU for your, not years, but decades of support throughout the area.
Did we have our detractors and our haters? Sure we did. But that’s all part of this business and the process. Putting out a local newspaper is always going to bring that on and that’s just fine.
Through the decades the one thing I learned to develop was a hard outer core shell. I learned not to take things personally when somebody criticized something they read either by me or someone else in the paper.
You learn in the news business that EVERYBODY gets an opinion and certainly has a right to critique and question what you put out in print. We took great pride in running ALL Letters to the Editor, good, bad or in between when somebody sent one in. Besides, I loved the negative stuff just as much because IT MEANT YOU WERE READING OUR PAPER!!
Another big-time thanks goes out to somebody none of you probably know and whose name has been on the masthead of every issue and that would be our Creative Arts Director, Armando Mato.
Trust me when I tell you folks that this was a guy that could take some of the chicken@@## ad copy we sent him and turn it into filet mignon. The same with all of these Gazette photos, pages and stories he would lay out and turn into magic. Armando has been a part of the Gazette family for three of those four decades and believe it when I tell you he was the glue that held this thing together, especially over the last decade.
On a personal note, (you already read about Maria) thank you to my two wonderful children, son Chris and daughter Jessica along with son-in-law Marc Marra and future daughter-n-law Isabel Mendez. Together they’ve always had my back and supported their dad all along the way, as did my ex-wife Patty who, thankfully I get along with very well (not usually the case with ex-spouses) and was there for two-and-a-half decades of those Gazettes, putting up with all the late nights.
Then there is the most important person walking the planet Earth and that would be my beautiful granddaughter.
It was not long ago that Charlotte Marra was born into this world with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (basically half of a heart requiring the second half to be built) and whether she would see her first birthday was very much in doubt.
Next month, Charlotte, my “walking miracle” will celebrate her eighth birthday and there isn’t a day that goes by that grandpa doesn’t cherish and appreciate every moment he has with her.
Finally we get to the most important person in this Gazette process – our Publisher and my boss Tom Curtis. I spent the late 70s and early 80s feeling like the luckiest kid on earth because I worked for the Miami Dolphins under head coach Don Shula. I thought my life would take me on that career path.
But, for various reasons things got sidetracked and a fork in the road arrived in my life. Tom, who I had come to know flying the Dolphin charter flights as he was then publisher of Dolphin Digest, wound up hiring me as nothing more than a budding sales associate for one of his publications, the West Kendall Gazette.
A year later, he purchased what was then called “The Miami Springs Shopper” from the Fields family and not long after that, we changed the title to River Cities Gazette. The rest, as they always say, is history.
Tom and I were joined at the hip that day and have been until now as we go our separate ways. But I will never be able to thank him enough for putting his faith in me all this time to help run his newspaper. Along the way, TC has had to take a lot of darts, slings and arrows aimed right at him from all the locals, sometimes perhaps justified but many times not. And plenty of financial sacrifices as well.
I kiddingly always liked to compare Tom and myself to Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon who starred in the 1993 movie, Grumpy Old Men. Couldn’t stand to be WITH each other or WITHOUT each other.
TC and I sparred a lot over the years over content in the paper but through it all, we always had one common goal ­– to put out the best paper possible for our readers and we do that until this final issue with a great deal of pride and feeling of accomplishment.
If you ask me, they ought to have a damn statue of this guy put up right there in front of the Gazebo on The Circle for everything that this newspaper has meant to the community during all this time.
At the very least, it would be nice, and certainly an appropriate gesture for the City of Miami Springs council (hint, hint) to recognize Tom and the Gazette for what it has provided for the community along the way.
I could probably fill two more pages if I really wanted to but time’s up. I’ve rambled on long enough.
I harken back to Forrest Gump, as he sits on the bus bench at the end of the movie talking to the old lady next to him. Life truly indeed is a box of chocolates, never knowing what you’re going to get inside and that’s pretty much how it’s been here at the Gazette.
What a great ride!! What a great run!! Thanks everybody!!!
I think I’ll go home now.