Rosella Kurkjian, a font of knowledge, good cheer in newsroom

Rosella (Gureghian) Kurkjian never got bylines or front-page stories but still loved her job as a newspaper librarian for more than 25 years. In turn, she was beloved by the editors, photographers, and reporters she assisted in researching stories, not only for her expertise but for the smile that always greeted them.

``Rosella was really a gem," Andrew Gully, a former Boston Herald managing editor, said yesterday. ``You could not walk into the library without her brightening your day. She was always there, always with a smile. She was an amazing resource for thousands of editors and reporters. The readers of the Boston Herald never knew Rosella, but when they put their 50 cents in the box, they saw the result of her work every day."

Mrs. Kurkjian, who retired from library work in 1993 but not from her interest in newspapers and the people who put them together, died Sunday of lung disease at her Watertown home. She was 89. She also had a home in Manomet.

``When Rosella retired, a whole era went with her," said James MacLaughlin of Westwood, former Herald deputy managing editor.

Mrs. Kurkjian first worked for the Boston Herald Traveler in the 1960s. She joined the library staff of the Boston Record American in 1968 and stayed on when the Traveler and the Record American became the Hearst-owned Herald American on Harrison Avenue in 1972. In 1982, Rupert Murdoch bought the newspaper and renamed it the Boston Herald.

Colleagues recalled Mrs. Kurkjian's photographic memory for the stories she clipped and filed daily, work now done by computers. She could retrieve them in minutes and suggest others on the same subject.

``Rosella was a one-person Factiva before the Internet," said reporter Brian Mooney, referring to the Web database used in newspapers across the country. Mooney, a Globe reporter, used to work at the Herald.

Her former boss, John Cronin, now a librarian at Winthrop Public Library, recalled her ``prodigious memory for news stories."

``Rosella was very adept at finding nuggets of information that really enriched a reporter's story," he said.

Though she was an ace at her job, she once told her daughter Karolyn Kurkjian-Jones of Boston she would have liked to be an opera singer, and failing that, a market investor, a field in which she became skilled.

``My mother was a human dynamo," said Kurkjian-Jones.

Mrs. Kurkjian's motherly caring for co-workers was also legendary -- the ``petite lady with a big smile and a bigger heart," Gully called her. Anyone with a problem could take it to Mrs. Kurkjian. When one reporter admired a vest she wore, she took it off and insisted the woman take it. An editor admired her earrings, and she did the same. Co-workers enjoyed her home-baked Armenian pastries.

Globe reporter Shelley Murphy, who also had worked at the Herald, recalled ``running to the library in a crazy rush, trying to get clips on deadline. Rosella would always be there, smiling, cheerful, calm. And, if you looked really frazzled, she'd sit you down with that look of concern and say, `How are you doing, dear? And how is your family?' "

Globe night editor David Jrolf recalled when he worked on Harrison Avenue and ``in the middle of a wild day in the Herald newsroom with people yelling and fighting over some forgotten big story, she came out and brought a plate of warm cookies to me and others. It was typical Rosella."

If there was something Mrs. Kurkjian loved more than her work, it was family, said her daughter, Elizabeth Kurkjian-Henry of Winchester. ``Her family was the most important thing to her, but not the only thing in her life."

Her son, Stephen, Boston Globe senior assistant metro editor, said her own close-knit family and her newspaper family were all one to her.

``She loved her job," he said. ``Not just making the money. She loved the interaction she had with people, the feeling that she was part of a team producing something."

``She would go to the ends of the earth to get information for a reporter or editor," he said, sometimes calling him or his sisters to make certain she hadn't overlooked a source.

Mrs. Kurkjian was born in Boston to Manoog and Elizabeth (Kasparian) Gureghian, immigrants from Armenia. She grew up in Dorchester during the Depression and went to work at age 16 while attending high school. At the time, her son said, she was the only family member who held a job.

After high school, Mrs. Kurkjian graduated from Boston Business School. She also had a title under her belt, from winning a beauty pageant in Boston's Armenian community.

She met Anooshavan Kurkjian, who was a noted commercial portrait artist, at a dance at an Armenian social club in Watertown. They were married on Sept. 18, 1938, as the Great New England Hurricane approached the Eastern Seaboard.

Mrs. Kurkjian did not forget the Depression years and remained frugal, her son said. Once while traveling in a taxi near the Herald, he saw his mother walking to the T station. He had to coax her to ride with him because she thought it too extravagant.

Mrs. Kurkjian's husband picked her up at the office frequently, however. ``Sometimes if there were a breaking news story she would tell him to go back and sit in his car," said Cronin. She wouldn't leave work until her mission was accomplished.

They were married 66 years when Mr. Kurkjian died in 2004.

After she retired, Mrs. Kurkjian did volunteer work at Mount Auburn Hospital for eight years.

In addition to her daughters and son, Mrs. Kurkjian leaves a brother, Richard Gureghian of Florida; a sister, Isabelle Totovian of Watertown; and six grandchildren.

A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. tomorrow at Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic Church in Cambridge. Burial will be at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.

One of her favorite sayings, her children said, was ``Portia Faces Life," the name of an early radio show. In it, the heroine faced any adversity head-on -- and with aplomb.