Congratulations, fellow journalist Tammy Wells, on a career well done

The movie critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel have always been my favorite pair of journalists. Sure, they perhaps came to be known as the guys with the thumbs on television and on the red carpets of film festivals and awards ceremonies, but at heart they were newspapermen.

Siskel and Ebert also were bitter rivals at first. Each was resentful of the other. Both plotted against each other for scoops. The two of them often went after the jugular, using witty and merciless barbs to cut each other down to size.

Over the years, though, these two journalists became friends.

Reporter Tammy Wells and I both have worked at local rival newspapers for the past 18 years. What I have always appreciated about the two of us is that we skipped the Siskel-Ebert rivalry and went right to the friendship.

Tammy is retiring this Friday, March 31, or thereabouts, ending her career in journalism on the highest possible note, following years of stellar reporting, all pursued with ethics, hard work, compassion, humor and heart. The local journalism scene will not be the same without her.

Back in 2006, I was at the Sanford News, a weekly paper, and Tammy was at The Journal Tribune, a daily one. I cannot recall at which assignment we first met – I bet it was at a routine town council meeting – but I had known of her beforehand because we had two people in common. One was my father. The other was my lifelong friend’s father.

Tammy wrote an article or two about my dad and his fight against ALS well before I started chronicling his harrowing but heroic journey in my weekly newspaper column and in my first book, “Islands in the Chaotic Ocean of Life.” I may have written several pieces about dad once I became editor at the Sanford News in 2006, but Tammy was there to write the first ones – and, bless her, she kept writing them, right up through the dedication of the Gary D. Sullivan Walkway in downtown Sanford, completed ten months after he died in 2012.

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Thank you, Tammy, for those wonderful articles about dad. I thank you, and my family thanks you. And I know dad was grateful for those articles you wrote that helped him raise awareness about one of the most devastating diseases a human being can face.

There’s a chance that you were nodding your head in both recognition and agreement while you read that last paragraph – no, not because of how it pertains to my family, but because of how it may pertain to you and yours. Tammy has written numerous human-interest feature stories about people in our area over the decades. And surely they, too, have been grateful to Tammy for helping them tell their stories to their communities.

My lifelong friend’s father was Bob Saunders, who for years was Tammy’s boss at The Journal Tribune. Bob and his family moved into my neighborhood in downtown Sanford in the late 1970s, when his son Nathan and I were both 5 years old. With a friendship going back more than 45 years, Nate is my brother in this world. And Bob, who died in 2020? He was like a second father to me.

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Tammy often speaks of Bob with appreciation and fondness. My sense is that Bob was the same at the Tribune as he was in our neighborhood. Thoughtful. Humble. Fair. Good-humored. Hard-working. Enjoyable to be around. These are words to describe Tammy, as well.

The Sanford News closed in 2017. The Journal Tribune folded in 2019. I’m not sure how Tammy felt when the latter happened, but with the closure of the Sanford News, I wondered if my time as a local journalist had come to an end – something I wondered even as I freelanced for the York County Coast Star. But you know how that old expression goes: when one door closes, another one opens.

I became a full-time reporter for the Coast Star in the fall of 2019. I remember the first time I covered a Kennebunk Select Board meeting in person. I walked into the meeting room on the third floor of the Kennebunk Town Hall, and there was Tammy, ready to report for The Kennebunk Post. I believe we chuckled at the sight of each other. After everything we had been through in Sanford and at our previous papers, there we were again, on the very same beat.

Just the way I liked it. While, like Tammy, like all reporters, I craved scoops and exclusives, the simple fact for me is that every assignment was better with Tammy also on the scene. I suspect this is true for most journalists who are thrown together on the same beats.

One door closes, another one opens. Congratulations, Tammy, on a successful career, and thank you for all you have done to cover our communities, to bring our lives to life on the page. As you close the door on journalism, we all wish you luck as you step through the next door that is open before you.

Shawn P. Sullivan is an award-winning columnist and is a reporter for the York County Coast Star. He can be reached at ssullivan@seacoastonline.com.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Congratulations, fellow journalist Tammy Wells, on a career well done