In a commencement speech to his daughter’s graduating class at Connecticut College, Alan Alda noted a familiar trait of human behavior. “People will talk for hours saying nothing much and then linger at the door with words that come with a rush from the heart,” the actor said. “Doorways, it seems, are where truth is told.”

Although Alda uttered those words more than 40 years ago, they stuck with me. They’re so apt.
So poignant.

Now I’m lingering in a doorway myself, a transition between a lengthy tenure as editor of the Business Times and retirement. This issue — the 734th I’ve completed since January 1999 — will be my last. It’s time to tell some truths.

I’m 65 years old. Three score and five, as Abraham Lincoln might have put it. And I’m more than 25 years into my work as editor of this journal. That’s almost two-thirds of a 43-year career that began in 1981, when I graduated from Colorado State University with a shiny new degree in journalism. The very next day, I coaxed my rattletrap Fiat over Cameron Pass to start my first job at the Jackson County Star in Walden. I’ve been blessed beyond measure to work in print journalism ever since. With real print. And, I’d contend, real journalism.

But those kinds of big numbers indicate it’s time for a change. For me. Also, I suspect, for readers who might enjoy fresh approaches to stories and new voices to tell them.

Unlike politicians so frequently caught in scandals, I really do want to spend more time with family and loved ones. My youngest son here in the Grand Valley. My oldest son, his lovely and talented wife and their precious and precocious 2-year-old daughter — my granddaughter — in San Francisco. My father and two brothers in Kentucky. An aunt in eastern Colorado.

A remarkable woman every bit as kind and gracious as she is smart and accomplished beckons me to Palm Springs and the desert in Southern California.

I cherish the Grand Valley and don’t intend to move. I do intend to seek higher mountains to climb and deeper oceans to plumb. Proverbial and literal.

I’m eager to devote more of my efforts to becoming what I always wanted to be when I grew up — a novelist. I’m looking for a literary agent and publisher who share my passion for two particular mysteries set in western Colorado featuring a newspaper journalist as sleuth. I expect a more concerted search to yield results.

Then there’s that other passion of mine — scuba diving. The pioneering oceanographer Jacques Cousteau warned: “The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.” Count me among the happily captive. I hope to slip away from the landlocked Grand Valley more often for distant dive destinations.

If I remain truthful in my doorway, I won’t miss many aspects of my job. Chief among them the erosive toll of incessant deadlines. Every job comes with deadlines. But in the newspaper business, they never go away. The stress only varies in intensity. Sometimes merely bothersome. More frequently full-blown apocalyptic. What’s more, I won’t miss working every other weekend to meet those deadlines. Not one bit.

I’ll dearly miss the people with whom it’s been a pleasure and privilege to work.

The lengthy list begins with my boss, Craig Hall. He gave me unbridled freedom to cover business news the way I deemed fit. He never told me what stories to write. Or not to write, for that matter. What’s more, he helped maintain walls separating news, advertising and opinion that were never breached. Not once.

I’ve been fortunate to work with an amazing cadre of contributing columnists who share their time and talents with Business Times readers. Among them Janet Arrowood, Dalida Bollig, Sarah Gray, Timothy Haggerty, Dean Harris, Phyllis Hunsinger, Paula Reece, Marcus Straub and Jenny Yeager. That’s not to mention columnists with Bray & Co. Real Estate, DWC CPAs and Lighthouse HR Support.

I’ve been just as fortunate to work with Alowetta and Marc Terrien, who conjure the Business Times website out of Thin Air. And Kitty Nicholason, who builds many of the ads that appear in the paper.

I regret there are far too many news sources I worked with over the decades to name them all. I only hope they know who they are and how much I appreciated their assistance. Some deserve mention, though, for making my job easier, among them Robert Bray, Curtis Englehart, Darah Galvin, Nathan Perry and Annette Young. Media relations professionals helped as well, including Keira Bresnahan, Sonya Foster, Linde Marshall, Karen Martsoff, Dusti Reimer, Selena Sanchez and Sara Spaulding.

I’ll miss most the opportunity to talk to the innovative and courageous entrepreneurs who start and operate businesses in the Grand Valley. Then trust me to tell their remarkable stories.

Alan Alda offered another important observation in his address. One I hope I’ve confirmed. “Deep in our hearts, we know that the best things said come last.”

Until his retirement, Phil Castle worked 25 years as editor of the Business Times. Reach him at philcastle59@gmail.com.