Political Gumbo: So Long Kevin

I’m not going for literary brilliance today.

Truth to tell, I have been dreading writing this column since I started writing it two years ago.   

Former Pasadena Weekly Managing Editor Kevin Uhrich died Saturday morning just before 2 a.m. 

My final journey with KU started in late July 2022 when he called me for what I thought was early birthday wishes.

Instead, Kevin told me he was hanging out with his mom and his brother. He was even talking to them while we were on the phone.

After we hung up and I got 10 miles or so down the road, I remembered Kevin’s mother and brother Jack died some time ago.

A couple of days later, I went to see him. He seemed okay. 

He had all the PW awards on the wall in his apartment. 

The same awards we pilfered after the new owners threatened to throw them out when the paper was moving to South Pasadena. 

The new guys confiscated our keys to the De Lacey building.

We made a fuss about it, but truth to tell it was all a show. 

We had spare keys made years earlier for that exact situation. 

Under the cover of darkness, we also took the bound copies of the paper which were donated to the Central Library in order to preserve the City’s history as told by the PW. 

Great times. 

During that last visit, we talked about old times and laughed a lot. He talked about the  book he was writing on the murder of Peggy Reber, who lived in Lebanon, PA – his hometown.

Carl “Koz” Kozlowski, finished that book earlier this year. It’s available on Amazon. 

After the laughs, I blamed the previous phone call on booze and put it out of mind as Kevin went to get his wallet so we could go eat.

But after I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, I turned to face a Kevin Uhrich that didn’t recognize me. 

A Kevin Uhrich, who had never seen me before. 

For what seemed like an eternity, we stared at each other. 

Him asking why I was in his house, and me accepting the fact that the  man I loved like a brother was battling dementia.

I didn’t know if I was going to have to fight him off or if the fog would part and he would recognize me.

It was tragic. 

I simply said goodbye and left. 

He’d call me several times more, leaving me messages, asking when I was going to turn in cover stories that were published years earlier. 

Apparently, he left assignments for other writers and me at the Pasadena Weekly. 

In March of 2022 myself, Joe Piasecki, Justin Chapman, former PW photographer Catherine Bauknight were called to his bedside for the end at Glendale Adventist. 

We arrived at separate times. 

Koz, who now resides in Arkansas, called in.

He was all but comatose and on a ventilator at that point. It was hard to recognize him. 

Everyday they removed the tube to see if he could breathe on his own.

We thought that was it.

But at some point he started breathing on his own. 

But he wasn’t going to get better, and the 9 a.m. phone call I got from the Koz on Saturday was inevitable.

I had been preparing for the phone call for two years and thought it would come from Catherine. She checked on Kevin almost daily. 

When I saw Koz on my caller ID, I thought he was calling about his pending Ice House show this Saturday that will bring many of the former PW staff back together for the first time. 

But it wasn’t. 

Kevin was like a brother to me, although I used to tell him I loved him like a brother-in-law when we worked together at the PW.

He knew more about local journalism than anybody doing the job today and maybe anybody ever. 

He was a newsman. 

He could tell you the importance of a story. Why it needed to be told, when it needed to be told and who needed to be interviewed to make it work. 

He could recite dozens of phone numbers, maybe hundreds by memory. 

Ironically, we didn’t meet at the PW. We originally worked together at the Star-News while I was a sportswriter.

Destiny joined us at the hip in 1987. One of us had been out all night drinking, the other had just been kicked out of the house by his girlfriend.

Not hard to figure out which situation fits each of us.  

I was in the newsroom early that morning, and as we talked about our situations, the Whittier-Narrows earthquake struck.

And the newsman leapt into action.

He told me to come with him and we raced to the parking lot. 

Before I knew it we were interviewing property owners and talking to a woman whose house was redlined after it shook off the foundation. 

I thought I was just a sportswriter with a tablet along for the ride asking questions here and there.

But no, I was getting integral quotes for Kevin’s story. 

After his shift was over, Kevin told me I could make it as a news reporter. 

After he left the Star News, he took over at the Pasadena Weekly and made it a local force in journalism first with Piasecki and then I came along and finally Carl.  

Under his leadership, we broke stories, we won awards, we gave voice to locals like Peter Dreier and Bill Paparian.

And yes we pissed some people off along the way. 

When we were right Kevin never backed down when people complained. 

When we were wrong, he sent me to make it right.

We endorsed local candidates like newspapers should do.

And when it was all over and the paper was at the printer on Wednesday, we would head to the 35er for our editorial board meetings. 

Yes, the beers flowed as we planned out the editions. 

I didn’t drop too many cold ones in those meetings. 

Somebody had to be sober when we went to work.  

And trust me that was not Kevin.

He didn’t care. 

More like, he truly didn’t give a damn, and that’s why we got along so well.

He’d walk right back into the PW and saunter by the owner and the publisher boozed up, laughing and joking like we were off the clock. 

It was his show and he knew it, and they didn’t get in the way as long as we produced.

And produce we did.

It was pushed forward by Kevin’s strong conviction in the public’s right to information. 

And if that meant a fight, he was ready to go.

After I figured out the identity of a local police officer whose house had been raided by the ATF for illegally selling weapons, I wrote his name in a story and turned it in.

I explained to Kevin how I figured it out.  

Other outlets either didn’t know or were afraid to go the distance with the name at that point. 

KU didn’t flinch. He asked me one question.

“Are you absolutely sure?”

After I went over the information with him again, he lit a cigarette and said “Damn good work, damn good story. We’re running it.

Now get me a follow up story. I want to know how he did it.”

Even after I uncovered the how, Kevin continued to push for more follow up stories.

And yes, we found legitimate follow up stories.

Finally he demanded I find a customer or someone the officer tried to sell a weapon to. 

I found one.

He pushed me, and even called me on the weekend about the story. Well he tried to call me, but I stopped answering his calls on my off days because he was getting on my damn nerves. 

When it was all said and done, I was nominated for Reporter of the Year by the LA Press Club.

Kevin and I should have been nominated together. The words were mine, but the stories were ours.

He was one of a kind. 

Our running joke on big stories was a line from “His Girl Friday,” reporter Rosalind Russell is hiding an escaped murder suspect in the criminal courts building.

When she reads her copy back to editor Cary Grant he responds, “Wait a minute you’re in the third sentence and you haven’t mentioned the Morning Post.”

Whenever we failed to mention the PW in a breaking story, Kevin used that line. I used it on Kevin when he made that mistake, much to his chagrin. 

So I created an opening sentence to silence Cary Grant Uhrich. 

You may have read it once or twice.

“The Weekly has learned…”

When Justin Chapman, who was a high school kid at the time, walked in off the street and said he wanted to learn, Kevin told him to sit at a desk and familiarize himself with the paper. 

Justin was published a short time later and was one of the best reporters I had ever seen by the time he finished high school.

He broke the Joan Williams story about a beauty queen denied the chance to ride in the Rose Parade in the 40s because she was Black.

The story went worldwide and Williams got her apology from several councilmembers and then-Mayor Bill Bogaard.

Kevin texted me from Colorado Boulevard on Jan. 1 saying “We did it, she’s in the parade.” 

After an intern from John Muir High School told us that a teacher’s boyfriend had leaked some not-too-cool photos of the teacher to district officials, teachers and students via email. 

I told the intern to write the story. 

The intern was afraid, but Kevin gave him a pep talk.

“You’re at the Weekly, you’re not an intern or a correspondent now, you’re a reporter like everybody else in here. This is what we do. Just write me that story.” 

Simple and true. 

That story was picked up by every TV station in the region, and that kid was fearless the next day when he walked into the office. 

KU took one look at him and told me, he’s walking like you now. 

Yes, Kevin was brilliant.

But as in most cases, that brilliance at times made him annoying as hell.

He would take two months worth of newspapers and audit everybody’s productivity. 

He’d compile a list of how many stories we wrote, how many cover stories, how many briefs and pin it on the board.

We thought about auditing how many cigarettes and other things he smoked at his desk in the same time period, but we never did it.

When I became the Deputy Editor KU would take the agenda and circle damn near every item and hand it to me and ask me to cover them.

Of course, I’d point out we didn’t have the space to cover all the items.

But Kevin was dogged, “Read the staff report, we may cover it down the road. Always read the staff reports,” he’d say while he took a drag on his cigarette.

So I started reading them – yep just to close his mouth, I started reading the staff reports.

And I came to love it, even after it shut him up.

He loved City Hall probably because he had covered a “challenging” City Council while working at the Star-News.

During that time, public arguments among members were common, and reporters sat behind the dais where staff members sit now. 

He saw it all up close and personal and loved every minute of it. 

Sadly after the Weekly was sold, Kevin tried to ride it out and protect his baby. He even thought he could save it.

He couldn’t.

Koz and John Sollenberger were fired almost instantly, leaving Kevin and I to do the work of six people.

I was already doing the work of two people. Unlike former deputy editors Joe Piaskecki and Jake Armstrong, I didn’t have a city editor backing me up and there was no true arts writer, just an arts editor for Carl. 

So we were doing the managing and deputy editor gigs, the city reporter job, calendar editor, arts editor and arts staffer jobs. 

And we were doing it well.

When they cut the political cartoons, I headed for the Mason-Dixon Line. 

That left Kevin the last man standing.

I warned him of his fate, but like always he wouldn’t back down. 

He was fired unceremoniously by email during the pandemic.

He didn’t get the send off I got or the goodbyes and hugs from his colleagues that Koz and Sollenberger, who died a short time after he was fired, got when they were given the boot by the new owners who promised not to fire anyone.  

I had a dream about Sollenberger in 2022 after I went to see Kevin. In that dream Sollie looked about 20 years younger, and he reassured me that everything was fine. 

“I’m doing good man, I’m okay,” he said. 

In the background Kevin smoked his cigarette and just smirked at me and shook his head in agreement. 

I told John he deserved better at the end, and I woke up crying. 

Kevin deserved better, too. 

They all did.   

Rest easy Kevin. You did great.

Oh yeah I almost forgot, I left a six pack for you in our spot on Saturday night.