Tomorrow is Ruth Seymour's last day as General Manager of KCRW, the eclectic, hip NPR station she's led for more than three decades. An event honoring her last night at the Getty Museum brought together station staff, community leaders and public radio people, including AIR Executive Director Sue Schardt, who captured this video of Ruth's parting words. Ruth is preceded by Warren Olney (To the Point), KCRW's Sarah Spitz, and David Bomford of the Getty.

KCRW's Ruth Seymour speech at the Getty from MQ2 on Vimeo.

"A number of those who spoke described what KCRW was like when Ruth took the helm 32 years ago," said Sue Schardt. "It was a small community college radio station that broadcast student basketball games on Saturday with a signal that went as far as Robertson Avenue."

During her remarks, Ruth said when she got there, the station was on its "last legs" and this "sorry state" gave her "an enormous amount of freedom, with the promise that maybe you will change it."

"I was given an enormous amount of freedom and independence, and those were the building blocks to building KCRW, and they were the most important. Whether you’re building a country, or building a relationship, or whether you’re building a radio station…Success was completely unplanned for. We hoped to survive….Success when it came was astonishing. Truly astonishing."

Ruth Seymour has been an inspiration to so many in public radio. Sue Schardt recalls the first time she met the mavericky public radio leader:  

"My own first encounter with her was as a eavesdropper on an elevator at a radio conference. I was new to the industry, working at Monitor Radio. Ruth was having a conversation with someone dismayed about her decision to take his particular program off the air in L.A. In that 25 second ride from the lobby to an upper floor, Ruth was direct, she didn’t mince words. She was (considering that we were on an elevator) transparent. Eighteen years after stepping off that elevator, I was awed, and thinking to myself, 'Who was that woman?' I still aspire to her clarity, her understanding of the centrality of creativity, and creatives, to the radio industry, and her fearlessness in speaking her mind. A deep curtsy to you, Ruth Seymour…rose petals raining down."

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