Saying good-bye to another second mom

The last time I saw Kathy Kessinger, I was breaking down the science of being hit in the groin while shooting photos during a volleyball practice at Santa Fe Trail High School. It was an embarrassing moment I haven’t shared with many in the years since, but it was a story I knew Kathy would enjoy.

Kathy had a distinctive laugh. It was a cackle, maybe even a bit wicked, and it was one of the many reasons I adored working for her and late husband Kurt at The Osage County Chronicle.

Kathy passed away Sunday morning at age 71. For the second time in 18 months, a good friend, her son Erik, is without a mother. That’s two women I consider a second mom who are no longer with us.

I hadn’t seen Kathy in years. She ran The Chronicle for a few years after Kurt’s death in 2002 before selling it. Considering the state of newspaper these days, that was a wise decision. She relocated to Lawrence and had been there since.

A few years later, the building that housed the newspaper for decades was demolished. That was a sad moment for those of us who worked there. The place had so much history. It’s the first place I wrote an article published in a professional newspaper. Kurt and Kathy taught me many lessons there, namely the value of hard work.

The Kessingers hired me to write several sports stories during the summer of 1994 in the months leading up to college at Kansas State. A dollar per inch may not sound like a lot, but writing long has its benefits. For an 18-year-old, that was good money.

A few days into my sophomore year at K-State, it was clear that a large college was not the best place for an introvert. I came home in August 1995 with no job, no plan and no college. Within a few days, I’d landed at Allen County Community College in Burlingame and had moved in with my dad and brother.

Without the Kessingers, though, the job thing would have been a problem. On the same day I pulled into our driveway in Burlingame, Kurt called to check in on me. The Kessingers were among a select group of people my father actually liked in town and he had filled them in on the deep valley I’d settled in.

Kurt and Kathy were always direct. That phone call was only a minute old when Kurt said, “Look, I want you to come work for me and write sports.” Over the next four years, I wrote hundreds of articles covering six area high schools. I worked 30 hours a week at $1 an inch. When you’re writing four or five articles per week, plus a column, that salary adds up fast.

A few years into working for the Kessingers, I opened the paper and looked through the articles, marveling at the stories some of the little old ladies wrote. I remember asking Kathy, “Do people actually read this shit? [Cussing was always accepted, even appreciated in the newsroom] Mable and Homer came over for beans and ham. …”

Kathy laughed her distinctive laugh: “You’d be surprised, Ernesto. People love that shit.”

She was right, of course. And that’s another memory. Kathy never called me Ernie. It was always “the great Ernesto.”

On the same day I asked Kathy about the Mable and Homer gossip column, Kathy asked if I’d look closely at the paper. I had, of course, but I had no idea what she was talking about.

“You’ll find it. Let me know when you do,” she said.

I went home and pored through the paper. Eventually, as she predicted, I found it: In the masthead, my name was mentioned as the sports editor of The Osage County Chronicle. At age 20.

That was Kathy. That was Kurt. The Kessingers were just good people.

A year later, the Kessingers asked me to pick out a few articles and columns to submit for the Kansas State Press Association journalism contest. I did, though I didn’t have high hopes.

A few months later, Kurt called me and told me to stop by and pick up a couple of things he had for me. I arrived to find certificates for winning second and third place in writing contests. Both certificates were in fancy frames with gold trim. I didn’t realize until years later that Kathy and Kurt had framed them.

In 2001, I got to hang out with the Kessingers at the KSPA awards while working at my second newspaper after college, the Emporia Gazette. Highlights included sharing a drink with Kurt. He asked what I wanted, and I said, “I’ll have whatever you’re drinking.” Kurt laughed. I knew why moments later when I tasted scotch for the first time. Pretty sure I lost some chest hair that day.

Later that evening, I was stunned when my name was announced as the winner for the sports writing contest. As I walked back to my table with the plaque, I looked toward the Kessingers’ table, where both were beaming. And I could hear Kurt when he leaned over and told a KSPA executive, “That’s the guy I’ve been telling you about.”

Again, that was Kurt. That was Kathy. They were the best.

Kurt was gone a year later. A victim of cancer. I think of him often, usually when I’m writing.

Not long after Kurt died, I got a call from a longtime newspaper executive who wondered if I was interested in running my own paper. It’d be a small paper. I could be the next Kurt. I was intrigued, though my sights were set for bigger circulations and bigger cities.

The executive was working as a contractor. He’d been asked to find an editor for a startup paper in Osage County. It didn’t take long to figure out this wasn’t The Chronicle. He was asking if I’d run a paper that competed against my mentor’s paper, the one Kathy now owned.

There was no way in hell I was going to do that, of course. I kindly said no, though I really didn’t want to say it kindly, and was in McAllen, Texas, working for a much larger paper within a few months.

Kathy and I worked together one last time in 2005-2006 when I moved home to work at the Topeka Capital-Journal. As a stringer, I covered sports for about a year. That time allowed us to reconnect, and for her to enjoy her sports editor taking a spiked volleyball to the groin in front of gym full of high school girls.

I can still hear her cackling.