Goodbye, So Long, Farewell My Friends
Ada Lambert | April 29, 2025
I am 15 and sitting in a sterile office as the woman with beady eyes nudges her glasses back into place. It is all unfamiliar, the heat, the palm trees — it doesn’t feel entirely real yet, nor do the people.
“Theatre 1 is full. Is there anything else you’re interested in?”
Her lips purse and one eyebrow raises slightly, questioning. Before I could answer, she landed on a course in the catalog with a subtle ‘mmm’ sound.
“What about Journalism 1? I heard the teacher’s really good.”
“Okay,” I say. It was the last elective open.
“Perfect, you’re all set. We will see you in two weeks!”
On the first day of classes, I went to the wrong room. I have journalism in the spring semester and not the fall, but still, I find myself standing at a teacher's desk, telling him, “Yes, I definitely signed up for this class.”
He explains how the schedule works, and after a few ‘ohs’ and ‘ahs,’ he walks me to the class I’m meant to be in, English 1.
“I’ll see you next semester, kiddo.”
✧─── ･ ｡ﾟ★: .✦ . :★. ───✧
Philip Caston was my first mentor. In the very first class we had, he rolled out his desk chair to the center of the linoleum floor, cup of coffee in hand, and began to tell us a story. The story starts with a girl named Faith Dutton. She had been right where we had been two years ago, in her first journalism class, and like me, she felt a pull to it immediately.
Faith, as he described, was not deterred by social norms and often stepped out of the boundaries of what was deemed “normal.” Often, Faith would spend her mornings at Caston’s desk, where they would have conversations and drink coffee together. One day, she was messing around and knocked his favorite mug off the desk. They both watched as it shattered into a million pieces. The next day, she gifted him a new mug. It was the one he was holding as he told us the story, one of his most prized possessions.
At the age of 16, Faith Dutton was killed by a drunk driver on the highway next to my house. I had never seen a teacher cry before, but Caston’s eyes swelled, and the iris of his eye seemed almost a clear blue. It had only been a few months since her death at the time of this story, and it was clear that the pain was unimaginable.
To him, his students and yearbook staff were his world, and to lose someone so brilliant in such a sudden way was jarring, unexpected, and filled him with a deep feeling of injustice for the light that had been so selfishly snuffed out of the world. Faith, though I never knew her, was the type of person we all wanted to be. She was passionate and determined, her ideas were innovative. She had a certain radical love to her, both towards herself and others. She exuded light.
After that day, I questioned everything I’d known about storytelling up until that point. What would it be like to tell real stories?
After Journalism 1 ended, I decided to stick with Caston’s courses and apply for the yearbook program that he was the advisor for. The program was oddly prestigious for a public school; they went to competitions and charged 80 dollars per yearbook, so we had a large budget for design and copy. This was not out of the ordinary for a Charleston school. They had the means.
We had to go through a series of handwritten applications, then interviews, and eventually, I got into the program. I was a clubs writer, so my sole purpose was to cover the many, many clubs that existed at Wando High School. The staff I worked with were the staff who had been with Faith just a year before, and much of the work we did aimed to embody her spirit. Her friends missed her dearly, and I felt a phantom grief for this girl I’d never met, wishing so badly that I had gotten one chance to talk to her.
I stayed throughout my senior year and loved every moment of it. When it came time for me to graduate, we had an award ceremony. An award that was created in the name of Faith was gifted to me by Caston’s choice. My mom cried. It was so unexpected that I froze when he called my name, and my body staggered hesitantly towards the podium. The inscription read “Be brilliant. Be fearless. Be kind.”
These words were her own; she’d written them in the caption of an inspirational Instagram post she’d made a few months before her passing. These words were what we were led by, they still lead me after all these years.
✧─── ･ ｡ﾟ★: .✦ . :★. ───✧
When I got to Warren Wilson, it felt like a no-brainer to look into the options for journalism. I came here in 2021 when there was no communications program yet and The Echo Crew had just been revitalized after a long hiatus, totaling four staff members. I chose to spend my first year on the student activities crew, though I truly wanted to be on The Echo.
The day I went to my interview to be on The Echo Crew, my face had just been painted at a student event. I had butterfly wings around my eyes and did not have time to wash them off. I worried I looked unprofessional or too whimsical for a meeting, but when I got there, the supervisor at the time, Jay Lively, said, “I like your face paint.”
✧─── ･ ｡ﾟ★: .✦ . :★. ───✧
In the three years I’ve been on the Echo Staff, nearly two of those years have been spent learning to lead a staff. Before now, I never saw myself as a leader. In high school, when the position of editor-in-chief was being discussed, I shrank back into the corner, hoping nobody would ask me if I wanted to apply. When I was given the position on The Echo, it was not necessarily by choice, but I’m so glad it happened. I was afraid I would not be good at it, and truthfully, I wasn’t at first. I struggled to find grounding in a leadership position, constantly torn between being a friend and a leader. I didn’t know how to motivate people, and often struggled to motivate myself.
The thing I did know was writing. When I was not chronically busy with my coursework, I wrote pieces I felt a lot of passion for. Book banning, women's rights, perspectives on celebrity worship culture, and true crime. I had the ultimate amount of creative freedom (within the confines of AP Style, of course), unlike in high school, where I was prescribed a specific type of story.
The Echo has given me so much. It’s given me a community, a place to talk about what is happening in the world without sinking into the eternal doom that the news can cause, and most importantly, it's taught me that you can be a storyteller in so many different ways. I can be a poet, a fiction writer, a memoirist, and a journalist if that’s what feels good. And it does.
I am eternally grateful to my staff, my co-editor, Emily and the multiple advisors I’ve had over the years — Beck, Barbara and Jay. They have helped me become a better writer and editor, and have been supportive in even the most trying times: all the seven-hour release nights, the learning curves and the struggle to navigate covering hard topics. On the other side of that, there is so much light and joy that I have derived from the crew; each person who has passed through has meant something to me. Some of my most cherished memories are in Vining A Basement, our little habitat.
Wherever The Echo goes next, I will be watching from the sidelines as a top supporter. Goodbye, Echo readers, and may a new era begin.