If you’re a reader of Commander Coconut’s column in the Orlando Sentinel’s Calendar section, you probably saw the note last Friday about the departure of editor Mary Frances Emmons. You can read what CC had to say here.

I’d like to add my praise and best wishes. For many of the 20 years that I was at the Sentinel, M.F. was also my editor, for my columns in the Calendar but also for many years at Florida magazine when my Table Matters column was still housed there.

Every few years or so there would be a reorganization and a redistribution of duties and I’d be shuffled off to another hapless editor. It was always a joy when the next reorg would reunite me with M.F. Her good humor and easy-going nature belied her expertise and precision as an editor. She never made changes just to put her own mark on a story, as many editors will try to do. And she never made suggestions that the writer make changes without demonstrating that to do so would make the article better.

Today is M.F.’s last day at the Sentinel, but unlike so many of the journalism departure stories these days this one is good news. M.F. is leaving the paper for the world magazines and will become an editor for Sport Diver, a Bonnier  magazine based in Winter Park. Who knew all these years that she’s a certified diver? Just goes to show, you can work with someone for all those years and not know everything about her.

But I knew enough, and I liked what I knew. Here’s wishing the very best for M.F.