Jerry Weaver, longtime Evening Sun city editor and farm reporter, passed away today. RIP.

I Tweeted that Thursday afternoon as soon as I read the e-mail from Doug Wilson telling me that Jerry had died at the ripe old age of 92. And at the instant the Twitter feed updated on our website, the irony struck me. Jerry Weaver wouldn’t have given a Tweet.

Jerry Weaver started at The Evening Sun in 1955 – 13 years before I was even born, and half a century before anyone ever dreamed of Twitter, or the Internet, for that matter. Jerry was as old school as journalists come – I’m pretty certain that he never even used a computer during his tenure with Chenango County’s Hometown Daily Newspaper. When I told Frank Speziale about Jerry’s death this morning, he envisioned him in the crowded and smoky newsroom on Hale Street, banging out stories on his trusty typewriter.

Jerry retired from his full-time duties at The Evening Sun in 1982, but by the time I started here eight years later, he was firmly ensconced as the paper’s agriculture reporter – and even in retirement, probably working harder than anyone else. That’s how I came to know Jerry, through his weekly visits to the office to drop off his copy (always typewritten, always on newsprint) for the Farm page – usually a feature story or two about a local farm, and his much-revered column on local ag issues, “Second Cuttings.”