Photo by Craig Fritz

The faces and the memorabilia collected by columnist Joline Gutierrez Krueger in the past 20 years and tacked to a post in the Tribune newsroom are coming down today as the newspaper ceases publication. Among the items of inspiration are (from left) a photo of the late Lewis Owens, a University of New Mexico creative writing professor; the funeral card for Natalie Mendoza, killed at age 12 in a gang-related shooting in 2007; and a pin commemorating Rio Rancho flight attendant Stephane Murphey, who was murdered in 1999.

Next to my cluttered desk at The Tribune is a pillar that I commandeered as a place to post the occasional photo, thank-you card or particularly pithy tirade from someone who found me absolutely insufferable, inaccurate, liberal, conservative or mean.

Thankfully, I never had to pin up many of those tirades, which is only to say that my detractors simply weren't very pithy.

My Wall of Fame — or Shame, as the case may be — is cloaked with years of layers of items like the unkempt refrigerator of a harried mother displaying the handiwork of her many kids. Each scrap of paper, photo, note represents a person who matters, for better or worse, to me and the job I do.

The job I did.

Today, my job ends, the Tribune's 86 years and my 20 giving way to the pressures of trying to run an afternoon newspaper in a 24-hour world.

We've known we were closing, or being sold, since Aug. 28, but it has taken this final day to begin dismantling the Wall. These were my mentors, my guardian angels, my inspirations, and until I typed that last word they were the things I needed to keep on going.

The first items were predictable. A photo of a happier Lee Owens, my University of New Mexico creative writing professor, the first person with any credibility to tell me that I just might have a knack for writing. His photo went up the day he killed himself.

Then, Shari Bluto, a colleague we lost to breast cancer. Her faith, spirit and kindness had been a daily reminder that journalists don't have to be crusty and cynical to be good. They could be, well, nice.

One of the first thank-you cards came from the parents of Barry Scott Brewster, the first to let me dig deep into the marrow of their misery to tell the story of the golden boy they loved before death and darkness descended.

Jean Ortiz, the girlfriend of convicted child molester and killer Terry Clark, gave me a photo of them in a rare prison embrace sometime before 2001 when New Mexico executed him and broke her heart. She would have married him had the prison warden let her.

Byron Shane Chubbuck, the notorious Robin the Hood bank robber, sent me a Precious Moments Christmas card from federal prison. He signed it with his gang name, Oso Blanco de Brew Town.

I had an autographed glossy of Nancy Grace hanging on the Wall, but someone stole that. Or burned it.

The largest of the collection, a "James Akin for President" banner, is pinned to the top, a reminder of the soldier killed near Baghdad this past summer and what could have, should have been someday.

There are so many others, murdered and murderers, saints and sinners, good and bad and glorious: Stephane Murphey. Natalie Mendoza. Albuquerque police Officers Michael King and Richard Smith. Kevin Shirley. MaryAlice Olmstead. Mary Louise Shirm. Teresa Reyes. Carolyn Rustvold. Carla Simmons. Linda Henning. John Hyde.

It has always struck me, and maybe it has struck you, that much of my work at The Tribune, like the bulk of what graces the Wall, has been about so much death. I can understand why that might seem macabre or depressing. But I haven't found it to be that way.

Those folks who have gone before us teach us things. Those who remain behind teach us even more. Death has a way of becoming life-affirming, and in the throes of its ghastliness we can learn, eventually at least, about the graciousness of living.

It's something I hope you might consider long after The Tribune is laid to rest.

So now here's another death, though one I had hoped not to cover for a couple more decades. The Tribune takes its leave, and I hope we have imparted something for you to remember us by over the years.

The Wall is coming down now, but it comes with me. Thanks for those memories, and thanks for reading.