It is 22 hours until the deadline for this issue, and I am rewriting Editor’s Notes for the third or fourth time this week. The designer and proofreader await, probably tapping their watches. Such behavior violates one of the standards set by my mentor Mary Ruth Yoe (Meet your deadlines), but it satisfies others that seem more important right now (Revise, revise, revise; get it right).

Not two weeks ago, Mary Ruth retired from the University of Chicago—as a legend. (She might mark that as hyperbole, but in this case I know better.) Her 20 years as chief editor of the University of Chicago Magazine set a record, and that doesn’t even count her next 15 years as the publication’s executive and senior editor, or any of the other ways she elevated and enlivened how the University communicates with its alumni.

For close to one-third of this publication’s lifespan, our readers—whether they knew it or not—have counted on the eagle eye and heady wit of the best in the business. A master of the pun with a sixth sense for lapses in logic and an eye for vivifying details and unintended innuendo, Mary Ruth crafted the best headlines, wrote and edited award-winning stories, and shared her abundant wisdom generously.

As we prepare for our first issue without her, we know we will keep asking ourselves, What would MRY do? The first thing she would do, without fail, is to ask, What do readers want? More specifically, What do UChicago readers want? This question guided her. It was the engine behind “the Mary Ruth edit” that has been a rite of passage for generations of staff, with all the hard-earned reward that implies.

My first such edit was a shock to the system and to complacency. I blushed, I despaired, I learned from it. Over time, I recognized it as the boon that it was. I’m far from the only one who was transformed by Mary Ruth’s steely scrutiny on behalf of a smart, curious, and exacting audience—i.e., dear reader, you.

A UChicagoan through and through (see the UChicagoan), Mary Ruth shares those traits. And from the moment she stepped on campus, she steeped herself in this place’s recorded history and passed-down lore, becoming a go-to authority for colleagues and readers alike. That knowledge imbued these pages and even the tchotchkes she dreamed up for Magazine donors—grotesque-and-gargoyle-festooned playing cards, stained-glass-window umbrellas, and thinker’s blocks.

Like the University of Chicago, she is where freewheeling imagination and rigor of execution come together. She was the perfect editor for this place, and it—not only we—will be poorer without her.

Thank you, MRY, with all our hearts. ♥

Read “The Intern and the Editor”: Mary Ruth Yoe shares some stories about her early years as editor and offers a few parting words of advice in an interview with Magazine Metcalf Intern Isabella Romeu, Class of 2026.