Somewhere in Sicily, there’s a town with Sam Mazzara’s family name all over it. Street signs, businesses, headstones, public records — you name it.

Now, after 39 years of managing the Audience Development Department, formerly the circulation department, at The Cullman Times, Sam is finally crossing the Atlantic to see his ancestral home.

Today is Sam’s last day at The Times. He’s retiring at a young 64 years of age, and his first order of business is to take his first real vacation — one that lasts more than a week; one that doesn’t require him to keep a cell phone close at hand — in decades.

“We’re going to Sicily and to Rome — that’s the plan for the fall. We’re gonna visit the hometowns that my grandparents were from,” says Sam, who came to Cullman in 1978, after marrying a local girl and accepting a job offer from former Times owner Robert Bryan.

“Remember: I’ve been pretty much stuck here seven days a week, more or less, since I started,” Mazzara says. “Martha [née Bates, Sam’s wife] and I just want to go somewhere. We want to just drive around the country. I’ve never traveled outside the United States. Heck, I’ve never even been to the Grand Canyon.”

If Mazzara sounds impatient to get gone, you’d never know it by his work ethic. He spent his final Thursday at the newspaper doing what he’s done, in one form or another, since the very beginning: putting out small fires, accommodating other people’s shifting schedules, and toughing it out — with a reassuring, almost mischievous geniality — until everyone who could possibly need him, for any reason, is satisfied.

He’s not hesitant to admit it: Sam Mazzara is deeply invested in the people who work alongside him, and in the community the newspaper serves.

“This place really is like home. You’ve got to think about it: I have spent more time here, in the last 39 years, than I have at the house — I guarantee you that. To retire…it’s sad in a way,” he confides.

That reflection doesn’t get too deep, or last too long. Predictably, Sam’s impishness creeps in. “But come on, man!” he says a second later. “Isn’t it about time I moved on?!”

Mazzara, a Birmingham native and graduate of Ensley High School, has seen a lot of changes in a four-decade career: changes within the newspaper industry, changes at The Times, and changes in Cullman, his adopted hometown.

“Back when I started, we were what they’d say, in the business, a weekly paper that got published five days a week. It had more gossip-type stuff: ‘The Garden Club met, and the Rose Society had their monthly social’ — that type of thing,” he recalls, noting The Times reaches more people than ever with its digital publishing at cullmantimes.com

“It’s not so much that way now, of course. It was a whole different world back then. But I was fortunate to be here at a time that was just good for the newspaper business, and we [The Times] grew quickly.”

Most everyone here at TheCullman Times feels it needs to be said, and there’s no artful way to say it: it’s going to stink to come to work Monday and find Sam Mazzara’s desk empty. He’s among a small handful of longtime employees whose identities are inextricably fused with The Times, and who’ve served as honorable, reliable community ambassadors for the newspaper.

Of course, there’s no telling Sam that. He reflects with gratitude on his career here — even if he never envisioned sticking it out for so long.

“I really didn’t think I’d be here my whole career,” he says. “When technology started to become a bigger part of things, Mr. Bryan sent me down to Wallace [State Community College] to train on some of the first computer systems that we used here, and I actually thought I would end up doing something with computers at some point.

“But I always had a soft spot for the Bryans — Mr. and Mrs. [Betty] Bryan. They were there for you when you needed them. Right when I started here, Beth [Bethany Burchette, the Mazzaras’ only child] was diagnosed with leukemia. Well, the Bryans still didn’t know me from Adam’s housecat. but they were so good to us. And I suppose I’ve kind of wanted to pay them back, with my loyalty, over the years.

“There have been some tough times, but I’ve enjoyed working here. Really, when you think about it, this is an enjoyable place to come to work.”

And so it is. But without Sam Mazzara’s optimism, good humor, and — let’s face it — deep expertise — it’ll take the rest of us a little while before we find our workplace quite as enjoyable as before.

All of us at The Cullman Times extend our heartfelt best wishes to Sam and his family in his retirement.

 

Benjamin Bullard can be reached by phone at 256-734-2131 ext. 145.