Having met Sarasota Herald-Tribune Publisher Diane McFarlin only once and then briefly — when we bumped into each other one night at a Ringling Town Hall lecture, and I learned that she was as warm and genuine up close and personal as she was elegant and beautiful from afar — I knew I wasn’t the best-qualified person to write about why so many of us, even those who don’t know her well, feel a pang of loss now that she’s leaving the H-Tto become dean of the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida.

To help me out, several other women, with far fewer degrees of separation to Diane than I, were kind enough to share their insights and memories via email. I thank them for helping readers get a glimpse of the woman behind the publisher.

BIZ (941) magazine editor Susan Burns was an intern at the H-T during the time that Diane, then in her early 20s, was already city editor of the H-T‘s sister paper, the Sarasota Journal. “Diane was an inspiration to so many contemporaries and other young women who watched her rise in the male-dominated world of journalism,” Burns wrote. “You don’t get to Diane’s position without incredible intelligence and drive, and yet she accomplished all of it with grace, warmth, integrity and humor.”

Writer and longtime H-T social columnist Marjorie North, who had a front row seat to Diane’s hardworking ascent through the newspaper ranks, wrote, “Diane was up every morning before daybreak and entered every sacred bastion of the newspaper, from advertising to circulation, human resources to press operations.”

Learning the nuts and bolts of the business was smart strategy; caring about the people at her paper and in her community seems to have been just part of Diane’s nature.

“Her business sense was sharp — think about how early she got into multimedia with SNN back in the ’90s — and it was matched by her commitment to community,” Burns wrote. “She helped raise millions for the needy in her leadership of Season of Sharing.”

Susan Rife, arts and books editor and senior staff writer, recalled coming to the H-T in 1999 as part of what was known as the “Wichita Mafia” — a group of four journalists from the Wichita Eagle, including Janet Weaver (now Coats), who was managing editor under Diane, who, at the time, was executive editor.

“When Diane moved into the publisher’s office,” Rife wrote, “we used to kid around the newsroom about the place being ‘Amazonia,’ with women as publisher, executive editor, managing editor and probably in several other key roles at the paper.”

As publisher, Diane had to make tough decisions during tough times. “Letting employees go was one of her greatest challenges,” North wrote. When the downturn came and layoffs became necessary, North recalled, “she knew it was better for her to do it with heart and compassion than for it to be left up to a hatchet man who didn’t know the organization like she did.”

Diane’s caring for the paper’s employees earned her a “staff who would fall on their swords for her,” North wrote, and Rife echoed those sentiments.

“I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say that she is well-loved in the newsroom,” Rife wrote. “Her newsroom background guaranteed that she ‘got’ us, and yet she maintained just the right amount of distance. I have never gotten a publisher’s office directive telling me to do this or that, cover this or that, or handle things any way other than as I saw fit.”

She wasn’t just well-loved at the paper though. Longtime friend and Sarasotan Jacki Boedecker wrote:

Diane and I have been dear friends since we met at the University of Florida as undergrads in 1974. Through our every-weekday-morning ritual of a two-mile, pre-dawn walk over the past two decades, I’ve been afforded the daily joy of experiencing all that is Diane — intelligent, generous, kind, courageous, humorous, honorable, ever faithful to family and friends — rain or shine. Her wise counsel, principled spirit and steadfast compassion have been an unfailing support to me, as well as my family, and she is a devoted role model, mentor and friend to my three daughters. Simply put, Diane has been and will always be a true blessing in my life.

And a blessing, no doubt, to countless other media colleagues and friends; families who were helped through Season of Sharing, and, of course, the thousands of readers in our community who can’t start their day without opening the newspaper first.

In their emails to me, North described Diane as “brilliant” and “ethical.” Rife, commenting about Diane’s well-known sense of style, wrote the words that many women in Sarasota have been thinking (only slightly enviously) for years: “She always is so put together!” And Burns captured the sentiment of all with her closing words, “Diane is simply a class act. We will miss her.”

And indeed we will.