Kathy Bradley announced last week that 30 years of writing a regular column for the Statesboro Herald was enough: she was retiring her regular observations. While the subject matter of her columns was different and her motivations for writing a particular column were ever evolving, Bradley said she always had a similar goal for each one.

“I want people to be curious about things,” she said. “And if I prompt them to think maybe slightly different … and the idea that you are a little more open to something you didn’t know before. That's what I hope to do.”

Bradley’s journey to writing for the public was a relatively long one, but she knew where her heart was at 7 years old.

“I've told this story many times,” she said. “In second grade I learned three new vocabulary words: college, scholarship and author. And they were my words. I decided in second grade they were my words. And that's all I ever wanted.

“By the time I was 17, I had two of them, but the author part I didn't get until I was 52. I went to law school because it was a good thing to do. I knew I'd be good at it, and it was stable, and it would enable me to have a good life. But you never get away from the idea that words are important once you figure that out. You're going to be a writer of some kind forever.”

Bradley is referring to the publishing of her first book – “Breathing and Walking Around” – to achieving her goal of becoming an author, but she started writing her Herald column before she turned 40.

And her column came about because of the comic strip character “Pogo.” Back in 1996, Bradley told several friends a funny story about her thoughts on the Georgia Legislature passing a resolution naming Pogo the official cartoon reptile of the state. She then shared the story with Larry Anderson, the editor of the Statesboro Herald at the time, who asked if she would turn her story into a written column that would be published in the Herald.

Soon after, Anderson asked if Bradley would like to be a regular columnist for the paper and so began her 30 years with the Herald.

“When I first started the column, I thought of myself as being kind of funny,” she said. “And so, most of them had an element of humor to them. Over time, the column developed into more of what I would call ‘thought-provoking ideas.’ But Pogo is how it got started.”

Also, Bradley saw humorous writing as keeping a little bit of distance between herself and her growing audience.

“Starting off in a more humorous vein was my self-protection,” she said. “I did not have confidence in what I had to say. So, my idea was to make them laugh. But as time went on, I just developed enough confidence that I thought,