WBTV Reporter Steve Ohnesorge is the longest-running on-air presence in the history of the station.

To give you an idea just how long it’s been, he’s worked at since Gerald Ford was president. And now, like many others in this business, he id deciding to walk away.

He posted the news to his social media that he is leaving at the end of next month.

“I think I can still get around and do things,” Ohnesorge told the Charlotte Observer. , “I can still move around with the equipment, and I can still do the job. What I don’t want to happen, is to get to a point where I can’t do the job, and then probably let the situation force me out.

“So that’s what makes it —” he pauses for a second before continuing “— tough.”

Equally tough, then, has been getting Ohnesorge to utter the word “retirement.” In fact, he conspicuously omitted the word from the resignation email he wrote to his bosses — which he also sent to them in hard-copy form after printing it out on yellowed letterhead that bore the name of long-ago WBTV owner Jefferson Pilot Broadcasting, stationery he’d been saving since the ’70s.

Instead, in a nutshell, he basically just told them: “After 45 years, it’s time.”