This Saturday is a special day for your friends at the Boothbay Register and Wiscasset Newspaper. At a noon luncheon in Freeport, Mary Brewer, our retired managing editor, will be inducted into the Maine Press Association’s Hall of Fame. In our business, this is a big deal. For us, it is a chance to celebrate one of our own.

We get much of our knowledge of the world and our nation from newspapers and TV. Day after day reporters bring us detailed reports from Afghanistan, Baghdad and Cairo. Other reporters explain global warming and the latest bad economic news from Europe. Back home, national and state politics are the hot topics, and our brother and sister news reporters and editors are in the thick of it.

In small towns, community papers provide us with news we can’t get anywhere else. They bring us news of our towns, our neighborhoods, and our neighbors. Each week in print, and every day on the Web, your friends at the Boothbay Register, Wiscasset Newspaper and other community newspapers write stories about our local government, churches, schools and businesses.

For 50 years, the best known writer of Boothbay stories was Mary Brewer. In a small office tucked in a white house at the corner of Townsend Avenue and Union Street, Mary Brewer told us about us. She wrote about our births and deaths, weddings and wakes, boat launchings and boat losses. She smiled while writing of our triumphs, from spelling bee winners to champion basketball games. She grinned as she wrote of Windjammer Parades and Fishermen’s Festivals. She was sad as she wrote of friends lost at sea and friends lost closer to home.

The residents of Boothbay, Boothbay Harbor, Southport, Edgecomb and Wiscasset counted on her to report the news honestly and fairly each week. Her writings always reflected her deep love for her hometown, her state and her nation. And they were always spiced with a dose of common sense.

Over the years, she served her community behind the scenes too, spending countless hours on the Boothbay Charities Golf Classic to help the Special Olympics, the Fisherman’s Festival and Windjammer Days. In her spare time, she not only found time to raise a daughter, but also she helped her husband Butch run a side business preparing and serving lobster dinners to thousands of appreciative groups.

In small towns all over American, editors and writers like Mary Brewer chronicle the events of our lives. In many ways, Mary Brewer and those like her provide much of the glue that helps hold our communities together. This Saturday, we are glad to join with our friends in the Maine news community, to honor her for her contribution to our profession and our community.

Each week, we bring our readers a column by her called Mary’s Musings. We are especially proud to bring our readers a column by the newest member of the Maine Journalism Hall of Fame.

Well done, Mary.