After more than 40 years of column-writing, Bill Ervolino retires from The Record.
Twice every week, I sit down at my computer, create a file for my next column and write the day it's running and a short explanation of what it's about.
Am I all choked up about it? Not really. But perhaps that is because it hasn't quite sunken in yet.
Although I came to The Record in 1990, I began writing this column in 1975. It doesn't feel like yesterday, but I can still remember, quite vividly, my first newspaper job, which I began shortly after turning 20.
It was a weekly newspaper on Long Island, called the Massapequan Observer, now known as the Massapequa Observer. The owner, Eric Besser, was working double duty, as both publisher and editor, following the death of his partner, Gerhard Hirseland.
Eric told me he couldn't afford to take me on, even for $120 a week. (That is what I was making, a few towns away, as a bank teller.) So I made Eric an offer: I would work for $60 a week for four weeks. If he didn't want me to stay, I would leave. If he wanted to keep me on, I wanted $120.
A month later, I was the editor of the Massapequan Observer, an award-winning weekly that covered the towns of Massapequa and Massapequa Park, and I was doing almost everything: day to day news, investigative pieces, police reports and covering local government. I was also laying out the paper and planning special issues including one commemorating the Bicentennial.
My first summer there, I wrote a story about a car accident in which a local boy, a recent high school graduate, had died. I had to contact his bereft family, get information about his short life and get a photo that I could run with the piece.
For me, there was no tougher assignment.
Weeks after the story ran, the boy's mother came to my office to thank me for the piece. She also brought with her a scrapbook she had made. I sat down with her and, as she turned the pages, I saw her handsome son grow up before my eyes. I saw him on Christmas morning, I saw him riding his first bicycle and I saw him going to his prom.
I realized that day that I was no longer writing stories for my English teacher. Lots of people were seeing my words. And the responsibility that went along with that suddenly seemed immense.
Eric told me that, as editor of the paper, I also had to write a column every week on the editorial page. I wrote for a couple of months about local issues and events before I happened to share a humorous story about my family.
The following week, I was deluged with positive mail. And the column, "It's News To Me," quickly became the most popular thing in the paper.
After five years at The Observer, I took a job as assistant editor (and, later, editor-in-chief) of Nightlife magazine. I began writing feature stories, doing celebrity interviews and, yes, a humor column that ran on the last page of each issue. I got to sit down and interview Liza Minnelli, Debbie Harry, superstar photographer Francesco Scavullo and scores of other bold-faced names.
I was having a ball. But most of the mail I received was about my humor column.
The tone of the column had changed a bit, but people were still telling me the same things: They related to it, thought it was funny and felt that they knew me.
I spent the rest of the 1980s freelancing for the New York Times, Daily News and New York Post, where I reviewed comedy and theater and got to interview Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Patrick Swayze and just about every well-known person in the entertainment business.
I also wrote a snarky review of a stage production of "The Wizard of Oz" that generated so many phone calls my editors asked if I would write a humorous column for the paper's Sunday edition in 1989.
A year later, I was offered an editing position at a new magazine called Entertainment Weekly. I wrote a few stories for them, but came to The Record at the urging of a former coworker who insisted I would make a good TV editor.
Part of the job included writing a column for the Saturday paper. And that column, which also morphed into an ongoing column about my family, was soon running on the front page of the entertainment section. It was expanded to a twice-weekly column and, for a while, thrice-weekly.
I was doing a lot of other writing during this time, and won national awards for my health and science writing, feature writing and critical writing.
But this nameless column, which everyone seemed to refer to as "Ervolino," had grown so popular, that my editors refused, on several occasions, to let me stop writing it.
Like many newspapermen and women of my generation, I dreamed of being the next Woodward or Bernstein. I never planned on being "that guy who writes about his dog and his crazy family." But, sometimes, fate takes over.
I've often said that the best thing about this job has been my readers, who have written me so many wonderful letters, come to my local appearances and stand-up performances and stopped me in stores to say ridiculously nice things about me.
My decision to leave The Record wasn't easy, but I want so much to teach and write a novel.
In the meantime, readers can follow me on Facebook and my new website billervolino.com, which is under construction and should be "live" in a couple of weeks. I will be sharing lots of stuff there, including family photos and new stories when I have any to tell. I still hope to speak and perform around North Jersey and remain as active as I can.
And I hope the extraordinary relationship I've had with all of you can continue as long as we're all here to enjoy it.
Through the years, so many of you have told me how much I became a part of your lives. You have become an amazing part of mine, as well.
Can you watch 'Prison Wives' without being judgmental? Nope!