Fitz's Opinion: After 40 years in journalism, a cartoonist's chapter draws to a close

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

As of today I am officially retired from my beloved Arizona Daily Star after 36 wonderful years.

In the new year, I’ll continue to submit my columns and cartoons to the Star, only I’ll be a freelance contributor on Medicare A, B and C who is able to take the long vacations I’ve dreamed of taking for years. After four decades hunched over a drawing board at various papers, without a sabbatical, I’m itching to pursue health, to do more stand up, to produce more shows, to try my hand at other media, to ride everywhere but on Oracle Road, to write the novels that have haunted my imagination for years, to work the garden in my desert Eden and to daydream without a deadline.

And write columns and short pieces.

This change is huge. I’ve been married to The Arizona Daily Star longer than I was married to three wives.

I owe my good fortune to so many:

Leonard Pitts, one of my favorite columnists, for showing me how to write a really good retirement column a week before I wrote this.

My life partner, my finest editor, and my best friend, Ellen.

Steve Auslander, the Arizona Daily Star’s executive editor, who took a chance on me back in 1986, when I was 31 years old. I’d been dreaming of working at the Arizona Daily Star since I was a 20-year-old college student drawing for the Arizona Daily Wildcat.

Thanks, Mom, for anonymously submitting clippings of the cartoons I drew at Rincon High School for the school newspaper, the Echo. I was mystified when the Wildcat’s student editor called me in for an interview. In 2003, I was inducted into the Wildcat Hall of Fame.

Thanks, Doug Marlette. It was an honor to lose the 1988 Pulitzer to such a fine cartoonist.

Mr. Burke, Terri Bagwell, Phil Varney and Freeman Hover, four public school educators who nudged me into the most rewarding career imaginable.

A few weeks ago, I visited Mr. Burke, my former 6th grade teacher. He taught me to love cartooning. In a spirit of good humor, he shared with me a beautiful drawing he’d recently created. I said to the old master what he said to me when I was 12. “Shows promise, Mr. Burke.” Throw in a hug and it was the best full circle moment imaginable.

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Tony Snow, my first editorial page editor, I wish was alive to thank in person. Tony gave me my first actual political cartooning job with “The Daily Press” of Newport News, Virginia. I worked hidden away in a custodian’s closet next to the printing press and I loved working with Tony, my brilliant old school Republican arch-enemy and delightful friend, whose response to outraged readers I never forgot. “I’m confident our democratic republic will survive our petty differences.”

Thank you, Daryl Cagle, for syndicating my cartoons worldwide and introducing me to so many wonderful cartoonists who became friends, greats like Angel Boligan, Pedro Molina and Emad Hajjaj. And thanks for dragging me to amazing cartoonist gatherings in Paris and Mexico City.

Thanks to Scott Stantis, Chris Britt, Pat Bagley, Jack Ohman, Jim Borgman and Steve Benson, the best cartoonists and the best friends a cartoonist could ever have.

Thanks to Jim Kiser, Sarah Gassen, Susan Albright and Curt Prendergast, the best opinion page editors west of the San Pedro River, for the gift of constructive criticism, the assurance that you had my back, and the finest gift of all, an enduring collegial friendship.

Thanks to the fool in management who thought running a column by a cartoonist would be a good idea. Thank you for a second magical life.

Thanks to the ghosts who haunt the newsroom in my heart, the souls who made me the journalist I am. Judy Donovan. Tom Turner. So many others.

Thank you, George Ureas. When you left us, I rescued your steel and glass compositor’s desk. It’s my drawing board now and I like to believe it’s haunted by your fine-humored spirit. You and every other compositor and press man made the Star a daily success and my life possible.

Thank you, Bobbie Jo Buel and Jill Jorden Spitz for your support, for your leadership in these challenging times, and for relentlessly leaning into the future where the Star will thrive.

Thank you for welcoming me into your homes. You have given me an unimaginable life. I may be retiring but I’m not giving you up. The column stays. And maybe the occasional cartoon. Unless I’m taking a longer than usual vacation. But I’m sure you’ll understand.

I am the luckiest retired cartoonist I know.

To follow my public appearance calendar, see more Fitz piffle and get links to Fitz videos, email me at fitztooner@outlook.com to subscribe to my free newsletter.