Publisher column: Farewell, my friend

As I write this, it’s my first day back in the office after a bout with COVID. Shanna has just tested positive for it for the second time, so she’s isolated in her room. If she contributes anything for this issue, it will be from her bed.

And if I look to my right, I can see Mike’s desk. The first thing I did this morning when I came in was take his nameplate and other identifying items off, putting them into a bag. Looking at that stuff won’t make this any easier.

You may have heard that Mike, our editor and dear friend, passed away suddenly on Friday, Aug. 4. We got worried when he didn’t answer our texts and, with the fast and kind assistance of the Johnston County Sheriff’s Office, we found him in his bed with a calm, serene look on his face.

It was a week shy of his 64th birthday, and my family was the only family he had left. His parents died long ago, and as an only child, he didn’t have any blood relatives left. That’s something we’ve gotten to explain a lot in recent days as we try to settle his affairs.

As a fellow journalist, it seemed only fitting that I write his obituary. One of the things you learn in our profession is detachment, but I couldn’t manage it as I typed it out.

Mike was born in Mecklenburg County, Va., to Charlotte Glenn Anderson and Glenn Bollinger. He graduated from Brunswick High School, which he would proudly remind you was the place that produced University of Virginia standout and NBA player Bryant Stith. He worked as a journalist for more than 30 years for publications in North Carolina and Virginia.

Henderson is where I met him, in October 2006. I was the newly-named sports editor, which was the job he had before getting promoted to news editor. We had plenty in common — a love of tennis and sports, and a healthy supply of cynicism and sarcasm to deal with any newsroom situation.

He started coming over for dinners, including the first Thanksgiving the month after we arrived. He didn’t miss a holiday at our house after that.

The following spring, Mike hurt his knee playing tennis. He had to have surgery and we were the ones who drove him to his appointments, got him groceries and did his running around for him while he recovered.

The following year, he paid us back. I took a job in Fayetteville in April 2008, but Ethan didn’t finish school until June. So, I moved here then — and Shanna and I both did the single parent thing for a couple of months.

Mike checked on Shanna and Ethan every day. He took out the trash, and hauled Ethan off to bed when he would crash out on the couch.

He left Henderson not long after we did, and spent most of the next 12 years working in Bath County, Va., at The Recorder. He got to coach the girls’ tennis team, which I know meant a lot to him, and he made some wonderful friends while he was in the mountains of his home state.

But he didn’t like snow and he missed us, so he retired and started working for us part time in the summer of 2021.

Every story in this issue lives in a Google Drive folder, and 90 percent of them have his name on them. His face is on the August cover, and over the weekend, I picked up the phone to text him twice while watching sports.

The last time I saw him was a couple of days before he died. He brought us teas from Evolve and more tea for the fridge while we were isolating. I thanked him through the glass door, then put some money out there when he was far enough away.

This was the second day in a row he had dropped stuff off, and we were running up quite a bill. I hoped $40 would put a dent in it.

One of the things we found after they took him away was a notepad he kept by his spot on the couch. It had an itemized list of everything he had bought for us, and a debit of $40 recorded against the balance.

If you know Mike, that was unmistakably him. It was the first time that day either Shanna or I smiled.

Mike was worried that he didn’t have enough money to retire, and by his reckoning, he would need enough to make it 20 more years. He was healthier than I was when he put his head on the pillow that Thursday night, and if there’s anything that one can learn from his passing, it’s this:

Don’t wait. Don’t wait to take that trip, start that business or change careers. Don’t wait to tell people that they matter to you. Don’t let those people pass from your life not knowing how much they meant to you.

Do it now. Tomorrow might be too late.

I love you, Mike.