Editor's Note: Goodbye, Farmingdale

Years ago, the first article I wrote for the Farmingdale Observer chronicled a contentious approval up at TOBAY town hall to build the Stop & Shop that now sits on the corner of the Liberty Site on Motor Avenue.

This week, one of the last articles I wrote for the Farmingdale Patch site was about a TOBAY hearing .

Today is my last day as Farmingdale Patch editor and fittingly, I feel my reporting career in Farmingdale has truly come full circle.

In the years in between those two TOBAY meetings, I've gotten to cover the Village of Farmingdale board  the civic groups , , and , the library , the school district's and the Dalers shine at and

I've gotten to learn all about and planes at Republic Airport, watch  a huge and cover a

I've also gotten to chronicle the less positive, having to hold back tears during interviews with on and at the scenes of  and fires.

The topics I've covered may have varied, but I've left every meeting, event, interview and scene with the same feeling of awe at the strong sense of community here and passion the residents and leaders bring to everything.

I started as the Smithtown Patch editor back in June 2010 and was ecstatic when I found out I was going to be able to launch a Patch site in the area I grew up and it's been a busy and great year and five months since then.

I could not have run this site without our contributors of bloggers and writers and other special community leaders, like Debbie Podolski and her staff at Farmingdale Library, Chuck Gosline and his civic groups, Jo Wider and the Chamber of Commerce, Mayor Starkie and the village officials, Tina Diamond and the other school volunteers, teachers and administrators, Nina Petersen and her volunteers at St. Kilian's and residents like Debbi Toth, Rosemarie Stauber and Theresa Rogers always keeping me informed.

At Patch, I've gotten to work with some of the most talented and hardworking journalists I know I will ever meet and this site would not exist without the guidance of Regional Editor Jason Molinet, Associate Regional Editor Pam Robinson (who will be running the site in the interim), Senior Regional Editor David Reich-Hale, our site Advertising Manager Maria Manaseri and the other TOBAY and "North Shore" cluster editors. 

I look forward to my new role as an editor on the AOL homepage, but Farmingdale is where I grew up and started my career and it will always have a special place in my heart.