As we waited in the limousine to take us to the cemetery where generations of Plumbs were buried, I glanced out the window and saw familiar faces leaving -- reporters and editors from The Tampa Tribune, where my father had toiled since before I was born. They had paid their respects to a colleague and were headed downtown to work on the next day's edition.

Beginning this week, The Herald will be put out without the contributions of City Editor Sula Pettibon, whose last day was Friday.

Sula has held other job titles, among them, intern, reporter, columnist, business editor and managing editor. Newspaper titles can be confusing, but two key leaders are the managing editor, the top newsroom administrator, and city editor, who supervises news reporters.

Soon after my arrival in Rock Hill to assume the editor's reins, I promoted Sula to managing editor. How that came about deserves telling.

In early 1987, she had only recently been named city editor when the editor resigned, to be followed within days by the managing editor. Before the latter change was known, I had accepted the editor's post. Until I arrived, the job of running the newsroom fell to Sula.

My first task was to sift through a stack of resumes for managing editor. None impressed me much, and after interviewing a few, I was even less impressed. One day Sula, who must have weighed all of 90 pounds, asked if she could speak with me. The conversation had barely started when she blurted, "I'm smarter than those guys."

To this day I don't know if she was the smartest, but she certainly had the most moxie. More important, in a short time she had earned the respect of her colleagues. She also knew the community, having lived in Rock Hill since her days as a Winthrop student..

Later ,I would learn that her nickname was "b..ch kitten," a sobriquet inspired, no doubt, by a butt-kicking the diminutive city editor administered to a reporter for screwing up an assignment. It may have been the unlucky reporter who wrote that the Knights of Columbus were affiliated with the KKK -- not a good thing when your city editor is Catholic.

Ironically, while we had our disagreements over the years, the only row I can recall was over a photo taken in a Winthrop science lab. "Never," I admonished, "run a four-column shot of someone dissecting a cat!"

Conflicting priorities

Like many professional women with conflicting priorities, Sula left the newspaper for several years to stay connected to her children during their adolescence. Later, when she was ready to resume her journalism career, the only opening we had was for business editor. She pleaded that she didn't know anything about business; she was a feature writer. "Fine," I said, "just write feature stories about business."

Indeed, she turned out to be a darn good business writer, but her job description didn't keep us from putting her on the big story of the day. Once, after she had recounted an exhausting list of articles she was pursuing, a senior editor said, "Sula, you're just a hot butternut!"

For years afterwards at The Herald, to be called a hot butternut was high praise indeed.

Still later, she was our front-page columnist. No matter the subject, she brought the same concern for accuracy and fairness, and the same compassion that has characterized her career.

That people in desperate situations now have a warm place to sleep for the night is due, in part, to a series she wrote on homelessness in Rock Hill. What made those articles memorable is that Sula didn't sugarcoat details. She described the misfortunes and poor choices that led to these people being on the street but did so without stripping them of their dignity.

You don't learn that in Journalism 101.

This wife, mother, concerned citizen, neighbor and friend is getting out of the newspaper game once again -- at least for a while. The Herald will be published every day, as usual.

But it won't be the same.