Here is the note that Fortune’s Carol Loomis sent to her staff members on Tuesday:
Three-score years and five months ago, I came to Fortune. I loved my job from the start and have always considered myself supremely lucky to be here. But today seems to be my last day before I retire, so…
The first people I have to thank are my editors, who have bailed me out many a time (including recently). Fortune has always had great editors, which is perhaps its biggest secret.
I worked with tons of reporters, but since that job description—as it was originally framed, with a writer and a reporter working together throughout a story—sort of vanished, there are not a lot of them around to thank. An exception is Shawn Tully—thanks a million, Shawn. He and I traveled to the wilds of Canada to do “How ITT Got Lost in a Big, Bad Forest,” a memorable story for both of us. Other reporters of that era still around, though I don’t think they worked directly on my stories, are good friends Andy, Pattie and Geoff. Andy, to state a big fact, is the 11th managing editor I have worked under.
I sparred so many times with the Art Department over space, but the certain truth is that I have huge admiration for what you do. And the Copyroom people—you’re friends and pros (by the way, do I hyphenate three-score?)! Thanks to everyone else, including the 500 crew (I will always love the 500 because I was here for the first rendition, in 1955); Kelly and Nancy, who make this place tick; and everybody else who has made Fortune what it is.
When people ask you why I am retiring and “age 85″ does not satisfy them, please suggest that they have the wrong question. The right one is, “Why did Carol work so long?”
I had a chance to put the answer to that in Fortune, in my 2005 memoir. The last paragraph said, “Most people who work have not been as lucky as I. To have had an absorbing, worthwhile job, carried out in the company of talented, likable people bent on creating the best product possible, in a collegial environment that many a person who has come from another journalistic organization finds amazing—all that is not the average working experience. And that’s why I’m still here. This is a hard place to leave.”
