EDITOR RETIRES: Cal Bratt served four decades as Lynden newspaperman

 On June 30, Cal Bratt will retire after four decades in the newspaper business. 

Ironically, he wasn’t the first Bratt to see his name in the local paper.

“My mother and two youngest brothers were featured in a story that I still have, focused on a recipe she would share,” Bratt recalled recently. The time was March 1969. “I was always aware of the Tribune. Everyone got the Tribune, and everyone read it.”

By always, Bratt means once the family moved from the Midwest to Lynden when he was 13.

“In the back of my mind, I always figured journalism would be my job,” he said. “I always loved working with words, reading, and following current events.”

Working on a second bachelor’s degree, from Western Washington University, in journalism, Bratt started part-time at the Westside Record-Journal in Ferndale, sister paper of the Tribune. He covered city council and sports, and by June 1980 was full-time at the Tribune, in the sports department.