You are reading the last issue of 2018, Number 52, marking the Gazette-Journal’s publication for the 52nd Thursday of the year. Once in a while the year has 53 Thursdays and we have an extra issue; but today we wrap up our efforts for the past 12 months.

Your Hometown Newspaper is in business because of you: you, our readers, and you, our advertisers. We cannot exist without the support of the people and businesses in Gloucester and Mathews, the counties we have proudly served now for 81+ years.

The Gazette-Journal marks the changes and the problems and the highlights and the bad news that make up community life. As a newspaper of record, that is what the GJ has been doing since it was established in 1937. Its ancestors, the Gloucester Gazette and the Mathews Journal, got their start early in the 20th century, and they dutifully recorded the same things for their readers.

We are grateful to all who support the paper and pledge our best efforts to keep the faith in the months a...