His Retirement Isn't a Sad Story

The Boston Herald

They are fixtures in your life, people you expect to see when you open a door, round a corner, turn on TV. It seems they have always been there - down the hall, down the street, just a phone call away.  “Hi Dad,'' I've been saying for 58 years, which is not actually always, but is always to me. 

I knock on his door and my father still answers.

Officer Tom Keleher drove a cruiser in my town for decades before he got his official motorcycle. A consummate cop, he was always there, too, directing traffic, pulling over speeders, issuing warnings, clearing the streets for a parade.

Six months age he retired, not because he got too old for his job, but because he was suddenly too young. He wanted to spend more time with his grandson, Jack. He wanted to take him fishing, take him to see the cows at Crescent Ridge, take him every minute and every place he could. He loved his job, he said. But he loved Jack more.

I round the corners now on York and Chapman streets and Tommy isn't there. And I miss the fixture he was. But I see him strutting around town with Jack and Jack's new brother, Ryan. And I see him happier than he's ever been.

Peter Mehegan is a TV fixture. He and Mary Richardson have been hosting ``Chronicle'' since Princess Diana gave birth to her first son, since my son, who is in his 30s, turned 13. More has changed in the big world and in all of our small worlds since ``Chronicle'' began than has remained the same. But there he and Mary Richardson are every weeknight - unchangeable.

I've loved this, the continuity of the hosts and of a show that is real and honest and not full of itself, not trying to impress, just telling stories, one at a time, one after another, night after night.

Except that Mehegan HAS changed and Richardson too. We've all changed. And after 23 years of cohosting a five-night a week show, Mehegan's done. Come September, he's leaving.

“Birthdays have a way of focusing the mind,'' he told a reporter last week. “I turned 63 on April 3 and I thought to myself, `My God. There are a lot of things I want to do in the time that's left. ”My father died at 55. I have three great grandkids. I want to teach them to fly fish. I have a tremendous amount of interests. I'm a golfer. I'm an opera buff. I'm not really retiring. I'm just moving on to something else.’' 

To move on you have to let go.

And this is never easy.

It takes an act of faith to believe that the future holds as much as the past. I will miss Mehegan on “Chronicle'' the way I miss Tommy Keleher on the streets of Canton. But the future calls and it's in a child's voice.

“Grandpa.'' “Papa.’'

The audience may be smaller but there are bigger stories to tell.