Susan Ellerbach spent 35 years at the Tulsa World, working her way from a reporter to the top job in the newsroom.
After years of getting letters to the editor, this editor decided to write back.
Susan Ellerbach spent 35 years at the Tulsa World, working her way from a reporter to the top job in the newsroom. In 2014, she became the ninth executive editor since the first Tulsa World print edition published before statehood in 1905.
In her letter that was printed the week she retired in September, she reminded Tulsans of the importance of journalism in today’s world, not the talking heads that crowd cable channels. She told readers who relied on them to get their “news” that those aren’t actual broadcasts that report news.
“They are personalities who take news events and load them with opinion based on the interests and beliefs that sophisticated research tells them the audience would like to see,” she wrote. “Be aware of what news is and where you’re getting it.”
The Tulsa World newsroom, she wrote, is home to journalists who are “providing more news about what directly affects you than you can get anywhere else.”
“If you have the right information you can count on, then you read it and make decisions for yourself,” she said reflecting back on that letter to readers. “It’s the same on our investigations on Epic Charter Schools or the election or the Oklahoma City bombing. Make the coverage fair and let the reader decide. That’s what we have always done.”
She said Tulsans are fortunate to have so many local journalists working in the area, not just those at the Tulsa World. While competitive, they all are working to serve the community in a time when facts are disputed.
“It’s a critical time in our city’s history,” she said. “It’s a critical time in our country’s history. Journalism is more important than ever.”
She said the Tulsa World’s coverage of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre is one example of how in-depth, extensive reporting offers readers truth they can’t find elsewhere.
“Randy Krehbiel’s work is putting it in context,” she said. “He’s making it a human story.”
One of the traditions she continued as the leader of the newsroom is to have editors who trusted their reporters to do the reporting to find the real story.
“Like our ads say, if we don’t do it, who will?” she said. “It’s up to the community to support its local journalists dedicated to reporting the news. There are too many communities now no longer covered at all by local journalists. In every case, the community suffers. We are very fortunate in Tulsa. But it’s up to the community to trust and support local journalism.”
Tulsa World Magazine's 2020 Tulsans of the Year
In a year filled with challenges and heartbreak, these people gave us hope.
Read about the other Tulsans of the Year
Gallery: Tulsans of the year — These people gave us hope
Tulsans of the Year: Aurash Zarkeshan
One hand squeeze for “yes,” two for “no.”
For those first few weeks in the hospital, it was about the only way Aurash Zarkeshan had of communicating.
“I had a breathing tube in, so I couldn’t talk. And one of my academy classmates who was visiting me came up with that idea,” he said.
Zarkeshan still doesn’t remember much from that dark time earlier this year. But there was one exchange, he said, that he was told about later.
Read the full story and Aurash Zarkeshan's first interview here.
Tulsans of the Year: Craig Johnson
All it took was one ride-along, and his mind was made up.
Craig Johnson, store manager for KB Toys, was going to change careers.
“He told me he was thinking about becoming a police officer,” said Susannah Ralston, officer with the Tulsa Police Department, adding that when asked if she’d take him out on a ride-along, she was happy to oblige.
“I think it was graveyard shift,” she said.
Tulsans of the Year: Bruce Dart
The text message that popped up on his phone contained just a single word.
But for Dr. Bruce Dart, it communicated everything it needed to.
“I’ll never forget it — it was from our response incident commander and it just said ‘positive,’” he said.
Tulsans of the Year: Health care workers
At the outset of the pandemic, health care workers were showered with gift baskets, parades, encouraging roadside signs and impressive F-16 fly-bys at hospitals. However, those expressions of thanks have waned and the COVID-19 hospital admissions and virus-related deaths continue. As Jake Henry Jr., president and CEO of Saint Francis Health System, noted, these frontline heroes “are exhausted after wearing personal protective equipment for a bustling 12-hour shift over and over again. “When they get in their car and drive home, they are truly spent,” Henry said. “When they enter unmasked apathy in public places — stores, restaurants and public gatherings — they feel defeated.”
Read more about why we honored local health care workers as Tulsans of the Year.Pictured above: Frontline workers James Burns, RN, BSN, Saint Francis Health System (left); Tulsa Fire Department Chief Michael Baker; Tulsa Health Department Division Chief of Prevention, Preparedness and Response Kelly VanBuskirk; Respiratory Therapist Brittany Ullrich from Ascension St. John Medical Center; Tulsa Health Department Executive Director Bruce Dart; Kayla Stack, EMSA medic and recipient of the 2020 Star of Life award; Dr. Guy Sneed, chief medical officer of Hillcrest HealthCare System; Nick Coffman, EMSA paramedic; Kelsey Two Bears, certified physician assistant at Sapulpa Indian Health Center of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Department of Health, stand outside Tulsa Central Library.
Tulsan of the Year: G.T. Bynum
In a year that’s seen Tulsa face some of its most pressing challenges to date, Mayor G.T. Bynum has not shied away from the demands of leadership.
It started with a search he initiated to finally answer lingering questions about possible mass graves from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
The search, which is ongoing, has so far yielded an unmarked site containing 10 coffins. It remains to be determined if it’s massacre related, but it’s an important next step, the mayor said.
Then there’s Bynum’s part in Tulsa’s COVID-19 pandemic response.
Tulsans of the year: Carlisha Williams Bradley
Carlisha Williams Bradley took on this challenging year with confidence and decisiveness.
In the pandemic’s early days, state leaders started deferring decisions to local levels. As a member of the state Board of Education, Bradley didn’t want to shirk that responsibility.
She was among the three board members pushing for strong statewide requirements, stating, “We are in the midst of something that is far worse than we ever predicted.”
Tulsan of the Year: Keith Elder
It was an off-hand, almost joking comment that started the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra on the path to making history.
The orchestra, like almost every other performing arts group in the country, had been forced to postpone or cancel all of its concerts after the city of Tulsa shut down in March in the face of the burgeoning coronavirus pandemic
Most arts organizations resigned themselves to not performing at all or creating online, virtual content to keep their work before the public.
But the Tulsa Symphony, said Executive Director Keith C. Elder, was determined to get before a live audience again.
Tulsan of the Year: Susan Ellerbach
After years of getting letters to the editor, this editor decided to write back.
Susan Ellerbach spent 35 years at the Tulsa World, working her way from a reporter to the top job in the newsroom. In 2014, she became the ninth executive editor since the first Tulsa World print edition published before statehood in 1905.
In her letter that was printed the week she retired in September, she reminded Tulsans of the importance of journalism in today’s world, not the talking heads that crowd cable channels. She told readers who relied on them to get their “news” that those aren’t actual broadcasts that report news.
“They are personalities who take news events and load them with opinion based on the interests and beliefs that sophisticated research tells them the audience would like to see,” she wrote. “Be aware of what news is and where you’re getting it.”
Tulsans of the Year: Tykebrean Cheshier
Tykebrean Cheshier realized she was different at the age of 5 or 6.
Her grandparents hosted her birthday party, and she invited a little girl who lived across the street.
“Her father told her that she could not come to my birthday party because I was Black,” Cheshier said. “I heard him say it, but he used the N-word.”
Then, she ran crying to her grandmother, who tried to shield her from the racism she would experience.
Now 22, she’s facing it head-on.
Tulsans of the Year: Lauren Landwerlin
Watching the epidemic spread across China, Saint Francis Hospital began stockpiling personal protective equipment in February, when the rest of Tulsa still seemed, if not oblivious, at least not terribly worried about COVID-19.
“I’m not saying we predicted the future,” says Lauren Landwerlin, executive director of corporate communications for the entire Saint Francis Health System. “But we saw the possibilities.”
The foresight allowed Saint Francis to ride out a disruption in the PPE supply chain until production ramped up in late spring. By June, as Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the area and President Donald Trump announced a campaign rally in Tulsa, Saint Francis was compiling data on how fast medical workers were going through mask supplies.
“We knew how many masks we were using per day,” Landwerlin says. “We knew how many masks we could have delivered and how long we could last if there was a shortage.”
Tulsans of the Year: Jeff Jaynes
The day third grade ended at Holland Hall, 8-year-old Jeff Jaynes went straight from school to the hospital.
He had gotten his tonsils taken out earlier that year. And after the simple operation, a nurse took a routine check of vital signs in the recovery room. She must have heard something unusual because she ordered a chest X-ray. And Jaynes went back later to have a grapefruit-sized tumor removed from tissue near his lungs.
If the nurse hadn’t been so diligent? If he hadn’t needed his tonsils removed?
“I wouldn’t still be here,” Jaynes said. “I was incredibly lucky.”
Tulsans of the Year: Bryce Thompson
Being a McDonald’s All-American Game selection is usually a good predictor for a high school basketball player achieving college success and reaching the NBA.
In 2020, Bryce Thompson became only the fourth boys player from Tulsa in 43 years to receive that honor. The other three — Wayman Tisdale (1982), Lee Mayberry (1988) and Ryan Humphrey (1997) — all had stellar college careers and were NBA first-round draft choices.
“It was one of my goals growing up,” Thompson said about his selection. “Knowing my name is in the same category with some of the all-time greats to ever play the game is special. Definitely a blessing that I’m very thankful for.”
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