The end of a real era... and a chapter

I just learned that Friday (Today) the Rocky Mountain News, Denver's first newspaper, is closing forever.

I don't know why this is killing me, but it is.

I guess because mom was such an avid reader and I remember Sunday mornings we would get up, come downstairs and start parting out the Newspaper for the comics and different parts of the paper (In our younger days the toy ads were rather popular... later I would actually read the Parade section... I was wierd). After I left home, the Rocky was one of the points that mom and I would often chat about over the phone. When columnist Gene Amole, suffering from a terminal illness, continued his column, chronicling his last days, Mom and I discussed that in detail, too...

I still remember in 5th grade Colorado history learning that in the early days of the Rocky, the "war" between Denver and Auraria as to whom would become the capital of Colorado, forced the paper to be built ON Cherry Creek... literally over the river (Since that was the dividing line between the dualing cities).

I used to cut comics out of the Rocky and glue them together in little booklets... (Mostly Alley Oop... I think I was trying to understand the story... and I figured if I collected enough of it, I might actually understand it... I never really did... but I loved the art). I went through Calvin and Hobbes, and Garfield and For Better or For Worse... It was from the Rocky that I clipped my copy of the last Peanuts cartoon...

Mom had copies of all of the great John Elway moments squirreled away, and when I went through her things after she died, I found a complete Rocky from somewhere in 1986 in a box... in almost perfect condition... (I still have no idea why she saved it...)

I remember siding against the Denver Post during the decade-long struggle between the two newspapers that almost killed them both...

...well, I guess it did manage to kill one of them....

I have always loved the Rocky... It was Denver's first newspaper. It is a part of Colorado history in a way that is so deeply entrenched and woven into the historical fabric that schoolchildren must learn about it (Though few seem to remember).

But it was part of my history too... and something about losing the Rocky... and not being able to call mom and discuss it and be shocked over it and bemoan it... it's just getting to me...

It's like losing a friend...

Goodbye Rocky Mountain News, I have great memories of you, I always will... Don't worry about your legacy, it's in our history books.

We will remember you.