On this pandemic Christmas Day, remember lesson of Wendi’s cookies

We’ve told you the story of Wendi Winters’ Christmas cookies before. But to those who knew her, and those who follow in her considerable wake, they remain a powerful symbol of the holiday season.

Wendi, of course, was one of five members of our staff killed in our office on June 28, 2018. She and Rob Hiaasen, Rebecca Smith, John McNamara and Gerald Fischman are remembered often by this community, their loss lamented beyond the reach of the small news organization they helped run in Annapolis. Wendi recently was awarded a Carnegie Medal, posthumously honoring her sacrifice to save others that day.

Every year, Wendi would buy 400 Oreos, dip them in melted chocolate, drizzle them with white chocolate and sprinkle them with crushed candy canes. She’d hand them out at the office to journalists old and young who considered themselves too cynical for a simple gesture of holiday kindness.

The cookies represent a truth we’re all feeling this Christmas. Lessons usually are appreciated when you can no longer thank the person who’s given you a particular morsel of wisdom.

What Wendi was doing was more than sharing toothachingly sweet cookies. What she gave us was the generosity of her spirit and an opportunity for starting a new. If only we’d been smart enough to grasp it.

That’s the idea of Christmas. Christians celebrate the birth of a man who offers the gift of redemption in exchange for belief— or, if you prefer, the promise of new life as the days slowly, gradually lengthen again.

By making us these cookies, Wendi told us that no matter how flawed we are, she wanted our friendship tomorrow. She enjoyed our shared work: seeking truth and justice, telling the tale of a small city by the Chesapeake Bay. We get it now, Wendi. This year reporter Selene San Felice made these cookies. She drove them to each of our homes, carefully observing social distances, to remind us of what we’ve lost and what we share.

As time has moved on, there have been changes in this newsroom. People have left, replaced by fresh faces and bylines. Our newsroom itself closed, and we’re spread among our various homes, figuring out howto make journalism work.

Time continues to roll on, and soon it will be another Christmas and then another, and the changes will continue to come.

For those among us who worked here that summer afternoon, there remains a melancholy that gets harder to discuss. We see it in the communitywe cover, too.

We got to know the families of those who died. Life has moved for them, and as you might expect, we haven’t been as good as we hoped at staying in touch with Andrea Chamblee, Maria Hiaasen and her three children, Erica Fischman and her daughter, Wendi’s son and three daughters and Rebecca’s mother and fiance.

We have benefited beyond words from the support of our readers, our colleagues in Baltimore and Tribune Publishing, as well as journalists everywhere who consider us a symbol of enduring press freedom.

Almost unprecedented political divisions frayed some bonds. Yet even from those who sometimes complain bitterly about our coverage or our positions on the opinion page, we sometimes hear a pause followed by a simple truth: “You know I’ve always supported you. Howare you?”

We’re fine. Thank you. We hope you are too. And in this pandemic holiday season, we have this incommon— we’re survivors.

So on this Christmas Day, as you call your families separated by the pandemic or politics, or go about your business because it’s just Friday. Don’t forget the lesson of Wendi’s cookies.

It’s never too late to appreciate the gifts a friend gives you. It’s never too late to say thank you and look for new beginnings.

Merry Christmas.

Lessons usually are appreciated when you can no longer thank the person who’s given you a particular morsel of wisdom.