But then Saturday, Nov. 5, came along, changing a lot in the process. I learned that evening that Chris Limberis had passed away earlier in the day. The news was beyond heartbreaking to all of us here at the Weekly. To say the least, this has been a hard year for us. We lost a good friend in Susan Sykes earlier this year; another member of our newspaper family was forced to quit working for health reasons, and yet another is currently in the hospital, gravely ill.
And now, Chris is gone.
To sum up what Chris' death means to all of us would make for an impossible task. But we did the best we could in our tribute to him in this week's issue. We offered the Weekly's staff and contributors, and some of Chris' friends, the chance to write whatever they wanted in tribute. Some 25 people answered the call. While Tom Danehy's tribute is in the usual Danehy space, the rest of them are in the Currents section.
There's one point I feel the need to enforce here, although several folks also make it in our tribute to Limbo: The death of Chris Limberis is a huge loss to the community. No exaggeration: Chris was such an amazing reporter, such a dedicated and knowledgeable community watchdog, that not having him here means more wrongdoing, hypocrisy and malfeasance will go unchecked. He's irreplaceable.
This is a sad week for Tucson. It really is.
