By Charles Melton
Melton’s Musings
Two weeks from Saturday. April 11. A day that will forever be etched deeply in my memory. A day that will never be forgotten. April 11, 2025, was the day I walked out of the Jamie L. Whitten Building in Washington, D.C., for the last time.
It wasn’t a triumphal exit like I had dreamed it would be when I retired in 2035. It was that bittersweet, somber walk of sorrow because my plans were blown to smithereens at the hands of Elon, Donald, and Brooke. So were the dreams of tens of thousands of others like myself during the weeks preceding and following that solemn April day. The anger, grief and pain still remain.
Honestly, the reality didn’t hit until Sept. 27 when I got the email stating that I had officially retired from federal civil service because I was still getting regular paychecks and made myself stay busy traveling and helping other federal employees in whatever ways I could. When the reality hit, it hit hard, so I decided it was time to get away from the D.C. area for a while, so I didn’t have to see visible reminders of the dream destroyed through no fault of my own.
When I was on administrative leave from April 11 to Sept. 27 I always managed to jokingly thank people who voted for the current administration for my being able to retire at 51 years of age. But the reality behind the smile and laughter was a profound sense of loss and uncertainty that I to this day at times struggle to handle in constructive manners. The hard days have become increasingly frequent the closer it gets to April 11 as I fully take stock of everything I lost on that day and the days, weeks and months following it.
I lost the sense of purpose that comes with serving my country at the highest level to the best of my ability and the daily camaraderie with like-minded professionals across the country who were part of my USDA family. I lost my identity because I was so deeply committed to my job that I didn’t have a life outside of it other than my daily walks and workout sessions. My mother passed less than three months after April 11, and I didn’t have my job to use as my coping mechanism. I lost someone who gave me the utmost grace and patience as I tried to work through my identity crisis and overwhelming sense of loss behind an early morning Corona that I downed to take the edge off my pain. I lost the financial security that comes with being a federal civil servant and the chance to move up even higher in the echelons of federal civil service. But the personal losses hurt far more than the professional ones.
My five months here at The Hutchinson Tribune and slowly but surely integrating myself into the Hutchinson and Reno County communities have put me in a better position than countless others who went through what I did. Daily I’m thankful for that. I truly am because Joey, Lindsey, both Adams (Stewart and Strunk), Brendan, Bruce, Rusty, and everyone else have made me feel at home here in the Midwest. Plus, it feels good most days to be back to being a reporter covering the small-town stuff that is a world apart from D.C. I’m blessed far more than I deserve.
Yet I know that when April 11 comes. I will be raising a toast to my fellow federal employees and praying for their continued healing as well as mine and that they find a new sense of purpose for their lives like I’m finding for mine. Sometimes life doesn’t turn out the way we planned, but the world doesn’t stop because of it, so we have to keep trudging on. One day, one story, one deadline at a time.
Charles Melton is the news editor of The Hutchinson Tribune. He can be reached at charles@hutchtribune.com.