'Chronicle' president is on his way to new adventures

Happy trails to you ...

- Roy Rogers

Julian Miller once told me this story about covering a trial decades ago in a south Georgia county.

As you might expect in a small, rural community, the courtroom was filled with the friends and family of both the victim and defendant.

To make things more tense, both groups were irritated that their small community's dirty laundry was being handled by a judge from neighboring Valdosta. And to makes things even worse, the Valdosta newspaper had sent over a reporter to tell the world what was going on.

Julian was the reporter.

After a few days of enduring the angry glares and hearing the whispered threats around the courthouse, Julian said the jury came back, the verdict was read, and he quickly grabbed his notes and began speeding back to Valdosta to write his story.

But as he raced down the rural two-lane highway, he said he noticed an approaching set of headlights in his rear-view mirror.

He sped up. The headlights got closer.

He sped up even more. But the headlights kept coming.

Deciding not to be pushed toward either a dangerous speed, or a traffic ticket, Julian said he slowed down to let the vehicle pass.

And as it did so, he looked over.

There he saw the judge racing his own car back to Valdosta.

Well, Julian is speeding out of town again.

After 25 years in Augusta, he has been named the next publisher of our sister newspaper in Savannah.

It is a wonderful opportunity for the man I met when he came here in 1979 as city editor. He eventually became general manager and then president of The Chronicle.

As you might imagine, we've spent the past few days here at the office telling Julian stories, and this one is mine.

The darkest day of my professional career came more than a decade ago when my then-employer, The New York Times Co., called 300 of us into an auditorium to tell us that they were abruptly closing down their Atlanta operation and our services would no longer be needed.

Twenty minutes later, the phone on my desk rang.

It was Julian.

"Come back to Augusta," he said. "We'll find a job for you."

That phone call said as much about Julian as anything I can think of. Not only was he the first one to call when a friend was in trouble, he had a solution to that friend's problem.

I know Julian will become involved in his new community. I know he will rise to leadership positions, and I know he will make new friends.

I also know if he gets lonely, his old friends are just a phone call away.

But he's always known that.