Our esteemed Bristol columnist Lorraine Fossett passed away Sunday night.
Our thoughts and sympathies go out to her family at this difficult time.
As her loyal readers know, she was battling cancer these last few years. We knew she was struggling as of late; but since she had spirit and optimism to spare, and she was never one to wallow in self pity anyway; right up until the end we thought she was going to beat this thing.
Lorraine’s loss is a loss for her family, certainly, for her community and, in the way she graced our pages, for all of us.
Collectively, LCN’s neighborhood columns hearken back to a time when local papers such as ours were filled with local people writing about the news in their neighborhoods. We have the archives here in our Newcastle offices; come in, take a look; see what we used to look like.
On those pages you will see when someone comes to visit, when there was a bean supper or other family events happening.
That stuff mattered. It still matters. Just the other day we got a note from someone with an item intended for our dormant Damariscotta Mills column.
All of our columnists have their own unique style they bring to the task at hand. Aside from some minor editing, they are essentially presented on our pages as they present themselves.
Lorraine delivered her news in clipped, precise sentences. Stylistically she truly reached back in time with a prose that would fit right in with The Lincoln County News of old. She told us all about family members, birthdays, visits, dinners, and the adventures of the family cat. It was personal without being too much so; it was endearing.
When she felt an off-topic rant coming on, about television, politicians, Michael Jackson, she would lay it out in clear, concise terms, and wrap it up sweetly with something like, “That’s my opinion. I welcome yours.”
She almost always closed with “Keep a song in your heart and a smile on your face,” or “Keep smiling. Its contagious.” Words to live by.
Lorraine’s departure is the latest worst development in what happens to be a rather bleak string for our columnists.
Just this year, alone we have lost four columnists and three columns. Faith Jones retired from her role in Damariscotta Mills. The excellent Candy Congdon is on hiatus from her Round Pond column and our long time Westport Island columnist Brenda Bonyun actually up and moved to Wiscasset.
Fortunately for us, and for Westport Island, Brenda’s column is being ably continued by Mary Ellen Barnes, a development for which we are eternally grateful.
Columnists are a unique and valued part of this newspaper. They are a connection to the communities we cover that we can’t manufacture. They don’t teach that kind of writing in J-school and being that the generations who prized newspapers, the written word and the importance of knowing your neighbor are fast going away, sooner or later, we will be without.
We will still have columnists after a fashion, only instead of writing about their friends and neighbors in their town, they will likely be divided topics; politics, birds, food. It will work, but it will be different.
It won’t be uniquely Lincoln County and we will all be the poorer for that.
