Andrew Skerritt: What a memorable adventure this job has been

This is my final column for the St. Petersburg Times.

I've had the distinct pleasure of spending the last 21/2 years traveling the length and breadth of Hernando and Pasco counties, meeting some of the most extraordinary people and hearing some of the most fascinating stories that provided fodder for three columns a week.

I had the best seat in the house watching Jack Crawford, the 90-year-old barber who is still cutting hair six days a week in Trilacoochee. (When I stopped by to see him a few weeks ago, his hair was jet black and he was still on his feet). I swam with manatees in Crystal River, milked cows at the Hernando County Fair, toured the Cross Bar Ranch and the wild Green Swamp, rode an airboat in the Gulf of Mexico and visited the Brooksville kitchen of a Pillsbury bake-off contestant as she made her mojo black bean chicken pizza recipe. Mostly, it didn't feel like work.

But being a columnist also carries special responsibility — to speak up when things aren't right, to decry injustice. As in the case of William Thornton IV, the teenager who got a raw deal when in 2005 Judge Ric Howard sentenced him to 30 years in prison for killing two people in a car accident in Citrus County. Law students in Jacksonville are working with lawyers in Citrus to overturn Thornton's sentence. The wheels of injustice turn slowly, but I look forward to soon reading the good news.

Not that good news has been in short supply. One highlight of this job was seeing people respond to a genuine need. A column about Lacoochee Elementary students needing help for their trip to the Kennedy Space Center last year got the phones ringing. A column about the need for computers at a west Pasco group home got a similar response.

But writing a column isn't all business. Sometimes it's very personal. Readers connect with the snippets from my life — acknowledging the 10th birthday of a lost son, almost losing my left thumb on a mitre saw, getting a $200 ticket for speeding in a school zone. I also shared stories about the growth of my two children — my son getting his driver's license and the accompanying parental anxiety. It has been far less stressful tracking my daughter's journey, from her pre-K graduation to her reading the newspaper comics as we drive to school each morning.

Most of all, though, being a columnist has been about relationships — getting to know people beyond their value for a good quote or a juicy tip. The best stories, the more heartfelt issues, emerge from those casual encounters we call real life.

The newspaper business is undergoing a difficult transition, but I believe there will always be an appetite for those stories.