Oct. 16, 2008 marks the fifth anniversary of the Lakes Region Weekly. Yes, there are elections, recessions and bank failures and all sorts of other news going on, but for this week, in this space, we’re talkin’ old times, waxing nostalgic. So, to that end, here’s a quick five-year recap, mostly focused on the people that made this newspaper go.

The Lakes Region Weekly was founded when Current Publishing owner Lee Hews bought The Suburban News from now Sen. Bill Diamond, Ray Roux (both of Windham) and Gary Cooper (of Augusta) in October 2003.

Most of the same crew from the Suburban made the transition to the Lakes Region Weekly including former Suburban editor Kay Soldier (of Windham) and office manager Sharon Hubbard (of Gray). I was employed as the editor of the Suburban from September 2001 until the sale, and also stayed on as a reporter for the new Lakes Region Weekly. The editor for the new paper was Josh Williamson, who was serving as a reporter for the American Journal at the time of Current Publishing’s purchase of The Suburban News.

The scope of news coverage changed at the Lakes Region Weekly. At the Suburban, we had focused on Windham, Westbrook and Raymond. At the new paper, we originally focused on Windham, Standish and Raymond. In April 2005, editor Josh Williamson moved to another Current publication, and I moved into his slot. With things in flux anyway, we added Naples as one of our coverage areas.

Over the years, we’ve been blessed with excellent reporters at the paper. We had Bruce LeClaire, a well-respected Windham reporter who worked mostly part-time covering all sorts of school and community news. Bruce also worked full time for about six months as the Standish reporter.

When Bruce left at about the same time I became editor (I hope that’s just coincidental!), we hired Peggy Roberts and Douglas Wright as the new reporters. Peggy covered Raymond and Standish, and Doug covered Naples and Windham. Both were very devoted reporters and as a result won several awards, the first ever for a Windham-based paper. At the 2006 Maine Press Association awards banquet, Peggy won for best news feature story and Doug won an award for spot news coverage. The paper also won an award in the general excellence category. Doug now works for CondeNast Publications and lives in New York City. Peggy is a staff reporter for the Forecaster family of newspapers.

In late 2006, Michael Hartwell and John Schoen were hired as their replacements. Hartwell covered Windham and garnered the Lakes Region Weekly’s biggest honor to date, which was a New England Press Association award for best spot news story, for coverage of the Patriots Day Storm of 2007.

In September 2007, the news focus evolved a bit more. The Lakes Region Suburban Weekly dropped the “Suburban” from its title and became the Lakes Region Weekly. The goal was to cover all six towns that border Sebago Lake. Another big change was to add community columnists from all the towns in the Lakes Region including Gray and New Gloucester. That practice has successfully continued to this day with mostly the same talented folks writing the columns.

The new and improved Lakes Region Weekly effort commenced last September with me as editor and a team of reporters which included Hartwell, Emily Devlin, and David Harry, who was the editor of another one of Current Publishing’s newspapers, The Citizen, before it ceased publication. After Hartwell, Devlin and I left in early 2008, David Harry became editor, Julia Davis replaced Devlin and Ben Bragdon took over for Hartwell, who left to become editor for the Gray-New Gloucester Independent.

Through it all there have been few constants. Lee Hews has remained publisher and Kay Soldier has written a weekly column or two (or three) and edited obituaries. And thankfully you, the reader, have been a constant as well.

John Balentine, of Windham, is proud to say he’s been a part of the Lakes Region Weekly and The Suburban News.