THIS is a painful letter for me to write. By now you undoubtedly know that LIFE magazine will stop publication with its next issue. TIME's current Press section explains the reasons why, and summarizes the history of the world's great pioneering picture magazine, the magazine that brought the globe to America's doorstep.

What I want to say here is more personal--something of what we at TIME have always felt for our sister publication. We were older (TIME started in 1923; LIFE in 1936). But LIFE by its nature was more spectacular and glamorous. We sometimes envied the lavishness of its enterprises--LIFE always seemed to be chartering planes across the Atlantic or organizing safaris into darkest Africa. Our photographers yearned for LIFE's large pages, and our space-conscious writers were awed by its willingness to carry very lengthy accounts of the fall of Rome or the rise of a star. Essentially, we loved LIFE and were fiercely proud of it.

Sometimes our staffs were keenly competitive, most of the time warmly cooperative. My own first job at Time Inc. was with LIFE as an advertising salesman in 1954. When I moved to TIME in 1957 and went on to compete for LIFE's readers and advertisers, my bonds with the LIFE staff remained strong. That experience was typical. One of LIFE's great managing editors, John Shaw Billings, had earlier been managing editor of TIME. Many LIFE staffers, including Editor Thomas Griffith, began their careers at TIME. In turn, the TIME staff has benefited from many LIFE graduates, including Senior Editors Timothy Foote and Leon Jaroff. Hugh Sidey served simultaneously as TIME's Washington bureau chief and a prized LIFE columnist. For years the correspondents of the TIME-LIFE News Service worked for both publications, sharing offices throughout the world and drawing upon the same support facilities. Inevitably they laughed together, sometimes suffered together and always shared the professional pride of working for the top publications in their field.

All this was symbolized by the words TIME-and-LIFE--which became virtually a single word in the American idiom. Moreover, that double label will continue to exist: on the Time-Life Buildings in New York, Chicago, London, Paris, Amsterdam and Tokyo; on TIME-LIFE Books and Records, and other projects and products. Much of the experience and talent that constituted LIFE will be used and reflected by other Time Inc. enterprises, including TIME, which we hope will be joined by some of LIFE'S people. Although we are a very different magazine, we will try in our own way to carry on LIFE's sense of excitement and discovery, combined with our own mission, which is to organize and analyze the week's events and to report the news that is not found elsewhere.

Meanwhile, we salute our LIFE colleagues, past and present, who have forever advanced the journalist's craft by giving the public for nearly four decades the best in word and image.

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