One of the most popular features in any newspaper - including The Citizen - are lists of public records. Arrests, court dispositions, judgments, satisfactions, business registrations, property transfers and building permits have all been listed on this newspaper's pages for years.

From the number of phone calls we get asking if they are posted to our Web site (they're not), I know that many readers check them out.

Because they are not actual stories, those records do not come with a byline in the newspaper. But there's still a person behind the scenes who logs considerable hours every week to gather the information and type it into our system.

For a decade, that person at The Citizen was Katharine Walters, known by everyone as Kit.

Sadly, we learned Friday that Kit had passed away the night before.

Kit worked as a news assistant at the newspaper from 1996 to early 2006. For those of us in the newsroom who had the chance to work with her, it was tough to think much about our jobs on Friday.

I had the chance to work with Kit for a couple of years. From the first time I met her when I started in January 2004, I knew that Kit was meticulously organized with her work and one of the most straight-forward people I have ever known.

I laugh thinking about her notebooks filled with her microscopic writing -- she saved us plenty of money just by packing her notes into one notebook that for most people would take up three.

But she had a system and it worked well. I could ask her a question about a specific record from weeks prior and she could track down the information in her notebooks within seconds.

I imagine this attention to detail and organization is what enabled her to be such an effective employee in the Cayuga County District Attorney's office. Prior to her time with The Citizen, she worked there for 23 years as an administrative assistant.

Her knowledge of the local court system was invaluable to me and many other journalists at the paper. Any time someone had a question about what official to call and what record to seek, Kit had the answer.

But beyond her work skills and idiosynchracies, the one word that comes to most people's mind about Kit is “generous.” She was always willing to help a colleague or a friend, even when they tried to refuse it.

We were all lucky to have been touched by this remarkable life.

Executive editor Jeremy Boyer's columns appear Saturdays in The Citizen and he can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 231 or jeremy.boyer@lee.net