Longtime Herald writer dies. Her features were praised as sensible, interesting and entertaining

A writer who entertained and enlightened Tri-City Herald readers for decades has died.

Lorretto Hulse of Pasco was 69.

She was best known for her work on the Wednesday food section, for which she wrote feature stories and shared thousands of recipes in the more than 38 years she worked for the Herald.

She joined the Tri-City Herald in 1971 shortly after graduating from River View High School in Finley in 1971.

That stint lasted 2 1/2 years, but she returned in 1978 and this time stayed for 36 years.

Retired Executive Editor Ken Robertson remembered that her first job was as a newsroom clerk, running telecopiers that were used by reporters in news bureaus around the Mid-Columbia to transmit their typewritten stories to the main office.

But she worked her way to up a reporting position, becoming a food and feature writer.

“She did a superb job,” he said.

And she was a “delight to work with,” he said. She was kind, always helpful and a good worker who continually learned and improved, he said.

She regularly won regional awards for her food and lifestyle articles.

Her writing career began with mostly community news, including weddings, engagements and anniversary announcements.

But after a few years she became to write “Cook of the Week” features, giving her the opportunity to meet and write about many residents of the Tri-Cities, Wash., area.

When the Tri-City Herald’s food writer left in the 1980s, she started writing the cover stories for the weekly Food section. That came with the added duty of often stepping in as food stylist for the photos for those stories.

In about 2004 she also began writing her “Food for Thought” column.

In 2007, Hulse was on the other side of the news production system, as her extended family was at the center of a tragedy.

Her nephew, Marine Sgt. Travis Pfister of the Tri-Cities was killed in a helicopter crash 20 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Former Herald reporter Sara Schilling, who was assigned to write an article about his death, said Hulse kindly helped her contact Pfister’s immediate family and then sat with her when she interviewed his relatives and listened to their memories of the young Marine.

‘With a smile’

“She did great work and did it with a smile,” said retired Tri-City Herald Publisher Jack Briggs.

She was personable and good at getting people to feel comfortable enough to open up and share information, both Robertson and Briggs said.

In a farewell column when she left the Tri-City Herald in 2014, she joked about the cooking tips she picked up over the years.

“I learned that asparagus actually is edible if it’s stir-fried and doesn’t have to be the green slime that comes out of a can,” she wrote.

A caterer told her the trick to keep fruit salads from turning brown was “a good glug or two of white wine.”

And many in the Herald newsroom would look forward to a slice of her potent rum cake at the holidays.

She also reminisced about how the newsroom she worked in had changed through the decades.

When she started reporters worked on manual typewriters in noisy newsrooms with the staccato of multiple Associated Press machines spitting out endless rolls of printed copy all day long.

A permanent blue haze from cigarettes hung over the room, she remembered.

Her final column in the Tri-City Herald prompted a letter to the editor from one long-time fan.

“For all these many years, I’ve looked forward to Loretto’s columns, newsletters and weekly pages,” wrote Jerri Main of Pasco. “Thanks to her for sensible, interesting and novel features, and for the entertainment.”

In her final years at the Herald she branched out into writing business news.

Among her last stories for the Herald were the closing of the Richland Bookworm and plans for Budd’s Broiler to open at Columbia Point and the Country Mercantile to open in the Badger Mountain South development in Richland.

She left the Herald in 2014 to write for the Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business for about two years.

Hulse is survived by her husband, Blaine. Mueller’s Tri-Cities Funeral Home, Kennewick, is in charge of arrangements.