I went trolling through The Tribune files recently, looking for the first story I wrote for this paper.

I found it on the top of Page A8 of the home edition on Oct. 30, 1976.

"Regents like tennis plan," the headline read in what looks to be 40-point type.

Written the day after I started working here, it was a report on a Saturday morning meeting of the University of New Mexico Board of Regents.

It told how the regents had tentatively approved the construction of a $330,000, 19-court tennis facility south of UNM's athletics administration building.

Pretty tame stuff. Pretty routine as news stories go.

Likely nobody cares about it now. Except me.

Since that first story, I've written a few thousand for The Trib — news stories, sports stories, features, profiles, reviews, obits, columns and commentaries.

Without a doubt, the one you're reading is the toughest I've had to tackle.

I've been trying to get it done for several months now, but I suppose you could say I've been working on it for more than 31 years.

This is my last Tribune story.

Everybody's a storyteller

After 86 years of continuous publication, The Tribune is closing after today's edition.

This is an attempt to tell you about the paper as I've known it for three decades.

Sure. No problem. We're only talking about more than half my life. How do you sum that up? All the years. All the people.

My friend Barb Page, ace Tribune copy editor, suggested the way to do it is to write about how The Tribune tells — has told — stories.

Can't argue with that approach.

The Tribune, despite a small staff and limited resources, has never shied away from tough issues or big projects, and we have always prided ourselves in telling stories in fresh, compelling ways — not just with words, but with photographs and design, too.

Everybody at The Tribune is a storyteller, not just the writers.

But where to start? There have been so many great stories just since I've been here — such as Jack McElroy's 14-part series on New Mexico's water resources in 1978, or Tina Griego's reports on American Indian gambling in 1997 and '98, or Mike Gisick's dispatches from Iraq's war zone just this past October.

Obviously, The Trib's high point was Eileen Welsome's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1993 series about Americans our government used as lab rats for plutonium experiments in the 1940s.

But Joline Gutierrez Krueger told Eileen's story in eloquent detail in these pages just this week.

Joline. I could start with her.

She joined The Trib staff as a copy editor 20 years ago and worked as an assistant editor on the features and metro desks before deciding to become a reporter.

Good call. She became one of the best reporters, best writers, this paper has ever known. I could do this whole piece just about the great stuff she has produced, but I'll pick just one story: "Party of Four."

Written in 1999, that piece, the story of four young people killed in a DWI car crash, is a prime example of how The Trib has told stories that defy convention.

"Party of Four" was an intimate portrait of the four victims and the people close to them, but it was brilliantly spliced into a timeline counting down to the fatal collision. Powerful stuff. I bet no one went right to the crossword puzzle after reading that.

Joline was also one of the main players in The Trib's 2002 "The State of Our Children" series.

Seventeen of us — about a third of our staff back then, closer to half of it now — teamed up on that package, which put faces on the myriad issues confronting kids, including prenatal care, single parents, rural isolation, suicide, guns and gangs, health care and substance abuse.

Did it make anything better? Maybe not, but we hope so.

Most of The Trib's major projects over the years — such as "The State of Our Children"; 1988's "Gallup: A Town Under the Influence," about alcoholism in that northwest New Mexico city; and 1989's "A Price on Their Heads," about the exploitation of New Mexico wildlife — have won state and national awards.

But we did them to raise awareness and effect change, not to take home trophies.

Sometimes, breaking news required pull-out-the-stops, full-speed-ahead, near-total-staff commitment.

Like that time between editions on Jan. 28, 1986, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded on launch, killing seven astronauts. Shaking off the horror of what we were seeing on the newsroom TV, everybody jumped in to completely redo the paper's second edition.

Barb Page recalls that while she was in the composing room as printers worked on the final stages of the makeover that tragic day, a security guard appeared to say there had been a bomb threat and everyone had to leave the building immediately.

Barb said that, to the guard's amazement, neither she nor any of the composing room crew made a move to go.

"This isn't negotiable," the guard said.

He was right about that. No one argued the point. They just got the paper out. Then they left.

There was Sept. 11, 2001, of course.

And then there was May 10, 2000, the day the Cerro Grande Fire, which had started as a prescribed burn at Bandelier National Monument about a week earlier, surged into Los Alamos, forcing residents to run for their lives and sending us here at The Trib into scramble mode. It was a story of shifting fronts, much like war reporting.

On that day, Trib photographers and reporters worked the story in retreat as they were forced, along with area residents, to fall back from the fire line at Los Alamos to White Rock and then — just after midnight — to Española.

Meanwhile, back at The Trib, editors spread the piles of copy and photos from the fire on the newsroom floor as they assembled a special section that was delivered May 11, not only to Albuquerque readers but also, free of charge, to refugee centers in towns near Los Alamos.

It was a tough day for New Mexico, especially for the people of Los Alamos. But it was a proud moment for The Trib, an example of what our small paper could accomplish by working hard and working together.

Hold the fluff, please

Newspapers are not all breaking news and issue-laden series. The Trib has done itself proud with human interest stories, too.

"The Story of Sage," reporter Julie Klein's and photographer Vickie Lewis' sensitive but unfiltered 1987 story about Sage Volkman, a 6-year-old Placitas girl disfigured in an awful camping fire accident, is a first-rate example.

Klein and Lewis told how the brave girl worked hard not only to recover but also to reclaim her position in a society repulsed by the cruel damage done to her face and body.

The Trib drew criticism for its graphic photos of Sage, but the paper was — and is — steadfast in its belief that the only way to honor Sage's courage was to show her to our readers as she showed herself to the world.

You can't write about Tribune feature stories without bringing up Hank Stuever. He's now on the staff of the Washington Post.

But when he joined our newsroom in 1990 as a young man barely into his 20s, some of us didn't know what to make of him, his modish and evolving hairstyles and his laid-back taste in attire that made those of us in boots and jeans feel overdressed.

We soon learned there was a polished maturity about his writing, an exquisite attention to detail that could turn a story about cracks in car windshields into a creative gem or a lengthy piece about a wedding into a community controversy.

"Andy and Darleine Get Married," Stuever's and photographer Kristy MacDonald's unvarnished eight-page, special-section coverage of a North Valley couple's June 1992 wedding caused an uproar in the couple's families and among dozens of Tribune readers who said the story portrayed Hispanics in a bad light.

The Trib stood by the story as an accurate depiction of the pretty and not-so-pretty aspects of the several months leading up to and including the wedding.

Stuever's work on the project was highly enough regarded in the national journalism community to make him a runner-up for the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing.

When it comes to Tribune sports, it's not a matter of talking about stories but of a clear and consistent voice — that of Richard Stevens.

For more than 33 years, Richard, or "Slick," as he's known around here, has covered sports — mostly UNM sports — for The Trib. He has done it seriously, humorously, fairly and fearlessly.

Readers sometimes haven't cared for his pull-no-punches approach. But they soon learned that if you wanted to know what was going on in Albuquerque sports, you'd read Richard. And if you wanted cheerleading, you'd be better off at pep rallies.

Pulling together

Nobody can be prouder of the work we've done here at The Trib than I am.

But tomorrow and next week and during all the years I have left, it won't be the stories I think of first when I think of The Trib.

It'll be the people who have made this newsroom a great place to be.

Yeah, I know, that's what most people say at times like this.

And since I've been in this newsroom most of my life, I don't have a lot to compare with my experience here.

But I find it difficult to believe I'll ever find colleagues more loyal and committed to each other — or more accommodating and caring.

It's not a maudlin exaggeration to suggest that The Trib newsroom is a family.

I have looked up from my desk to see Editor Phill Casaus, the boss of The Trib, carrying the infant daughter of reporter Maggie Shepard around the newsroom, so Maggie could concentrate on a phone interview.

Babies, children, even dogs were welcome if it made it possible for staffers to get to work. Even if they just made our day a little brighter.

And no editor ever flipped out because Joline, the single mother of six, sat up until midnight writing her stories at home, close to her children, rather than in the newsroom.

When a valued employee found herself unable to drive, staffers signed up for turns to bring her to work or take her home.

We've always found a way to get the job done, because everybody here was pulling for everybody else.

This newsroom never let your dedication to work overshadow your respect and affection for colleagues. If that wasn't your style, you probably moved on pretty damn quick.

The Tribune has been hard work; it has been fun; it has been my home; it has been my life.

You know, the most special thing about that first story I wrote for the paper all those years ago is the same thing that pleases me most about this last one.

Right under my name, it reads "Tribune Staff Writer."