June 27, 2019 607 PM
This is the last issues we publish of the Big Bend Sentinel and The Presidio International. It’s been a rewarding 30 years. If we can claim some success, it was our readers and contributors who made this a truly newspaper community, who interacted with us, read our stories, saw our photographs, and fostered a dialogue about our way of life, the environment, education, ranching, government, art, music, culture, politics, and the border.
We were fortunate to have an amazing group of journalists, writers, photographers, cartoonists, and collaborators who joined us along the way, telling stories about the people, places, and happenings of Far West Texas. We are truly grateful to all of you.
Our roots are here and it’s been an honor to chronicle the people and places we call home.
Far West Texas wouldn’t be its enigmatic self without each and every community. Marfa, Presidio, Alpine and Fort Davis are lovely towns in a lovely setting with lovely people. They are ever-changing towns, which is partly what this is about, a changing of the guard, we suppose, another generation, another group of residents to call this area home and make history here.
We came to Marfa 30 years ago to publish the Sentinel, purchasing the newspaper five years later. A year after that, we acquired The Presidio International.
Our three children, Miriam, Alberto and Diego, grew up spending much time in the newspaper office, after school, of course. All three worked for the newspapers. Miriam continues working as a translator for The International.
Publishing two weekly newspapers in a border county has been rewarding and exciting. We have seen the renaissance of Marfa, from a dying town to a vibrant community with people flocking from all over the country, from all over the world. It’s a town full of creatives.
We’ve seen the ups and downs of Presidio, tied to its sister city of Ojinaga and how the Mexican economy can affect Presidio. Presidio is experiencing improvements to its border infrastructure, and that’s a good thing.
So many of you have crossed our path and it has been a pleasure meeting all of you. We thank you for your support. We thank our readers, subscribers, advertisers, reporters, photographers, columnists, cartoonists, contributors, employees, all of you who helped get the newspaper into the hands of our readers.
We thank the staff at the Monahans News press, and before that, the Pecos Enterprise press, for printing our newspapers without fail on a weekly basis.
All of you helped make us successful. Thank you.
On Friday, we hand ownership of the newspapers to Maisie Crow and Max Kabat. We hope you continue supporting them and the newspapers and the mission of a vibrant community journalism.
Maisie and Max and their staff will take the newspapers to higher levels. Journalism in the Big Bend area of Far West Texas will only get better with them at the helm. That the 87-year-old Sentinel continues is a testament to its past owners, its readers, advertisers and newspaper employees.
As for us, we will continue to call Marfa home. God permitting, we hope to travel and see more of this big and beautiful world. Our roots are in Marfa and Presidio, and we are sure that we will continue to be involved.
Again, thank you. It has been an honor serving as publishers of two award-winning weeklies.
A free press makes for a strong democracy. Let’s all keep it that way.
