Laura Urseny didn’t want any fanfare over her retirement after 41 years with the Chico Enterprise-Record.
That was a tough one for me. If ever anyone deserved fanfare, lots of recognition on her last day and probably even a parade for everything they’ve done for this newspaper and community, it’s her.
Out of respect, I went along with her wishes. There was no going-away party (virtual or otherwise), no last-day Zoom with lots of special guests (although we tried, but being the great reporter she is, she sniffed it out and we shut it down) and, finally, no long goodbye written by her final boss in the pages of this newspaper.
Until today.
See, Thursday was her last day, and since she doesn’t work for me anymore, I figure it’s probably OK to go ahead and say what I really think now.
And what I really think is this: I’ve met around 800 journalists in my life, another 41-year career that’s gone from Corning to Eureka to Walnut Creek and San Francisco and back. If I ever worked with anyone who combined work ethic, talent, professionalism, journalistic integrity and a love for the job better than Laura, I’d be hard-pressed to think of them.
Throw in “kindness” — a word all-too-rare on our planet these days — and that’s her. One of a kind, and a first-ballot enshrinee on the Mount Rushmore of the Chico Enterprise-Record.
I suspect most people reading this have known Laura a lot longer than me, and anything I say is just going to add on to what you already know. But, here goes anyway.
I met her shortly after coming to Chico to help launch the NorCal Design Center at the Enterprise-Record in December 2013. I remember one of our first conversations was about a less-than-appropriate photo that someone had provided to run on the cover of a special section she spearheaded; I remember thinking “I’m really glad she hates that photo,” and I like to think she walked away thinking the same thing about me.
(It didn’t run, and it forever sold me on her journalistic integrity.)
From there, I marveled at the way she did such a tough job with a smile on her face, and always an encouraging word for others. You, the reader, already knew that. I had no idea how much it was going to mean to me someday.
When it was announced in December 2018 that David Little was retiring and I’d be the new editor, the very first person in the building to congratulate me was Laura. She was also the first to let me know she’d be happy to help anyway she could and I could always turn to her for any advice or institutional knowledge.
To say I took her up on that offer a lot would be an understatement.
As I told her Thursday (in an email, because I didn’t want her to see me cry, and vice-versa), it’s always more of a challenge to follow someone who had done a great job than someone who didn’t, and I knew I had an impossibly tough act to follow after David Little. The way she stood in my corner from Day One and never once compared me with her friend who had been her boss the past 20 years meant the world to me. It always will.
So, too, will the way she was such a caring mentor to our newer reporters. I’ll miss that. I know they will, too.
As a reporter and writer, she could say a lot with just a few words. (It’s a gift I don’t have, as evidenced by the fact I’m already running out of room today.) So, having told you my first memory of Laura, I’ll close with my last.
It was Thursday. Her final day on the job. She began by saying “Well, I have kind of a light day.” And she went on to describe at least three news stories she was still working on, plus work in her role on the editorial board, and another thing from her role as business editor, and after about the fifth thing, I interrupted and said “I thought you said you had a light day.”
“Oh … it is,” she said.
Maybe for her. Not for most of the people I’ve worked with. But, then again, I’ve never worked with anyone quite like Laura.
She’ll be missed. And as a reader of this newspaper, you already know that even better than I do.
Mike Wolcott is editor of the Enterprise-Record. He can be reached at mwolcott@chicoer.com or you can follow him on Twitter @m_mwolcott.
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