This month, Reminder Publishing is welcoming a year of celebration in honor of our 60th anniversary.

In November of 1962, Reminder Publishing – known at the time as Reminder Publications – was founded by Carlo and Anne Buendo; a husband-and-wife duo looking to bring a shopping guide to East Longmeadow.

Up until the mid-‘90s, The Reminder was a true family business – with all leadership positions filled with family members, including Carlo and Anne’s sons Chris and Dan. The sons took over the business in the 1990s as co-publishers, and soon built out a management team that welcomed a few non-family members into the fold.

Over the years, The Reminder shifted from being a shopping guide to incorporating press releases, and in the late 1990s the company began to refer to The Reminder officially as a traditional newspaper, introducing reporters and news staff. During this time, the company also purchased the Chicopee Herald.

The Reminder and the Chicopee Herald were not the company’s only products, however. Prime magazine, a lifestyle publication geared toward those aged 45-plus, was launched in 1992, as well as various newspapers such as the MetroWest Reminder, the Springfield Reminder, the Agawam Reminder and Journal Bravo. Additionally, Go Local – a monthly publication dedicated to celebrating life in Massachusetts and Connecticut – was released in late 2014.

As time passed, publications came and left, but the East Longmeadow Reminder always stayed strong.

Then, in 2018, The Reminder was purchased by Advance – one of the largest, private, family-owned businesses that invest in various sectors of media, entertainment, communication, technology, education and more. Now a sister company, The Republican gave us Fran Smith as our general manager and – truly – fearless leader, who set us off on our expansion plan.

The plan was simple: launch a new paper every four to six months, winding up with a total of 12 weekly newspapers by mid-2022.

During this expansion, The Reminder purchased The Westfield News, welcoming several new employees and of course, the publication – a daily paper – which was new territory for the company.

Present-day Reminder has completed the expansion plan, boasting 12 weekly newspapers: the East Longmeadow Reminder, Chicopee Herald, Ludlow/Belchertown Reminder, Monson/Palmer Reminder, Springfield North Reminder, Springfield South Reminder, Holyoke Reminder, Easthampton Reminder, Northampton Reminder, Hadley/Amherst Reminder, Agawam/West Springfield Reminder and The Original Pennysaver. We have continued to publish the Westfield News, as well as Prime and Go Local.
Needless to say – it’s been a busy 60 years, but an especially busy past four.

To celebrate our 60th anniversary and our accomplishing most recent years, we will have a year-long observance with initiatives, community-facing promotions and of course, an employee celebration to recognize our team’s hard work. However, the celebratory aspect that I’m most excited for begins this week.

For the next 60 weeks, which will bring us to the end of 2023, we are welcoming 60 nonprofit organizations into all 12 of our weekly newspapers with a full-page of self-promotion, free of charge, to publicize the amazing work that they do. Please take the time each week to look and learn about these organizations, and perhaps how you could become involved with ones that may personally resonate.

This week, we kick off our celebrations with Girls Inc., whose mission is to “inspire all girls to be strong, smart and bold by providing them the opportunity to develop and achieve their full potential,” according to girlsincvalley.org.

I would be remiss if I didn’t thank our loyal advertisers, who put faith in us as a vehicle to spread the word about their businesses, and our loyal readers, who continue to make the trek to the ends of their driveways every week and pick up our papers, keeping us a success.

Whatever your association with our publications – a lifelong reader or a new reader, a longtime advertiser or someone with a new business giving us a first try – thank you for your confidence in our publications. We are honored to serve you.

Congratulations to the Buendo family for creating a business that is standing the test of time, and to my coworkers to whom the company would not be thriving without.