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The Oshkosh story was quintessential Schlosser. It took a slice of life -- in this case a landmark people drove past every day without noticing -- and made its story come alive. As with most of Jim's stories, it told me more about my future home than anything else in the paper.
I've always been convinced that my answer got me a job here.

Jim retired Friday after 41 years of writing -- no, telling --- stories about who and what makes Greensboro Greensboro.

To us, it has been like being a teammate of Michael Jordan's: you know you've played with one of the greatest in the game.

Jim turned 65 last month. A Page High School and Guilford College graduate, Jim joined the Greensboro Record in 1967. Since then, he's written about 10,000 stories by my count and has covered the General Assembly, countless ACC and PGA tournaments, presidential inaugurations, the Olympics and the Super Bowl.

He retires with eight Landmark awards, our in-house honor for journalistic excellence, and he was the first winner of the Rugaber Prize, which honors "an intense drive to discover unique and significant stories."

Over the years, he has won awards from the N.C. Press Association for his news writing, his spot news writing, his feature writing, his sports writing and his columns. Where so many journalists are specialists, Jim enjoys being a generalist. Yet, while he is indeed a jack of all trades, he is a master of all, too.

Of course, those are just numbers and trophies. Jim has meant so much more to both the paper and the city. His stories have given Greensboro and Guilford County a distinct sense of place. That's not just me talking, either. The Joseph M. Bryan Foundation gave Jim a special award in 2004, choosing him "for his care and love for Greensboro" and his skill in writing about the city's "ordinary and extraordinary people, her past, present and future, and her strengths and weaknesses."

That precisely captures Jim's core: his ability to find and write interesting things.
His stories tell us who we are.

Whenever someone famous passes away, we ask Jim about the person's ties to Greensboro, and he usually knows. I learned this early on when I told Jim that my wife and I married at Grace United Methodist Church. Jim said, "You know Charlton Heston got married at that church when he was here with the Army Air Force base."

He knows the less famous, too. Twenty years ago, a fire ravaged part of downtown and a body was found in the ashes. Jim speculated it was a homeless man he called by name because he knew many of the "street" people. I remember that he was right.

I used to say that the best training we could give a new reporter is to sit them next to Jim and have them listen to his interviews. He has an indescribable way of pulling interesting quotes and telling details from even the most reluctant subject.

On the other hand, you can tell when he is having trouble with a story. His hair, normally brushed across the top of his head, comes out teased and spiked. The tougher the story, the more often he twists his locks around his finger. We have all seen him when his hair-do resembled Bart Simpson's.

In my early days, I was the lone city editor for the afternoon paper. We were preparing to merge it with the morning paper, and I had only one reporter. Jim didn't work for me; he wrote for the morning paper. But he never failed to ask me if I needed a story, and he never turned an assignment down.

Editors before me said what makes him so good, other than his talent, is that he came to work every day afraid he was going to lose his job. I don't think so. I believe he came to work every day determined to prove himself -- not to his bosses, but to his readers.

He knows that writers live on the good will of their readers. Without readers, the best writer is wasting his time.

I never thought I would see the day Jim retired. I figured he was as timeless as the history he loves to write about. He has always been the first in the newsroom and among the last to leave. Journalism is in his blood.

Fortunately, he's not going away. Jim has stockpiled some stories about Greensboro history to prepare us all for the bicentennial celebration this year. And then, after a hiatus, he will be back as a regular columnist.

He can't stop telling the stories that tell us who we are.