RUMFORD, Maine — Most days, you'll find Bruce Farrin walking around Rumford or another town in Maine's river valley region, a pocket of municipalities in Oxford County that reside on or near the Androscoggin River and within a short drive of the Appalachian Trail.
On a perfect October day, he hastily strode down a street in the town of Mexico until he found a bus dropping off students at the mouth of a trail.
The newsman was on assignment, his camera at the ready.
Farrin shadowed a group of Rumford Elementary School students who were using the trail to learn about nature and read with their teachers. He is a photographer, reporter, and the managing editor of the Rumford Falls Times, a weekly paper operated by the Lewiston-based Sun Journal.
He's worked for the Times since 1986. Thumb through any edition, and you'll see his name everywhere, in bylines and photo credits.
Earlier in the week, former co-workers came to the Times' office to reminisce.
"He's documenting this whole community for the last, I don't know, 40 years," Abbey Casas Rice, reporter from 2002-2006, said. "It's pretty amazing."
Everybody, Rice added, has had a picture of their child in the Times.
Amy Wight Chapman (2008-2009) and Sherri Crockett (2009-2014) are also former reporters. He rarely, if ever, had more than one working with him at a time.
"He is the institutional knowledge of the town of Rumford and Mexico and Dixfield," Chapman opined.
"It's a true legacy," Crockett added. "Bruce has been an integral part of the communities for so long."
Bruce and current reporter Marianne Hutchinson still cover hard news, like a recent mold discovery in the middle school or the occasional town select board shakeup. But, in a time when local papers are closing around the country, the Falls Times' readers keep coming back for stories that are unique.
"The stories that you're gonna read in the Rumford paper you couldn't read anywhere else," Chapman explained. "Whereas you can go online if you hear there was an accident. You can enter two or three words and find six stories about it from different news stations."
"I did a story on a father and daughter starting a lemonade business this summer," Farrin picked up a copy of the paper. "I don't know who would, you know, a daily paper that would necessarily be interested in that."
He estimates he's published 2,100 issues of the paper, with no immediate plans to slow down. And, once he does retire, Farrin said he still wants to contribute as a freelancer.