Almost 35 years ago, one of the first people to greet me when I reported for a job at The Vicksburg Post was Laurin Stamm. She’d been here 23 years.

That day, she dubbed me “Mitchell,” perhaps because our boss was Charlie Faulk and she decided one Charlie in a small newsroom was enough. I’ve been Mitchell since. Even just before Christmas, after being feted upon becoming “food editor emeritus,” Stamm, as I called her in return, looked up at me from her computer and said, “Mitchell, don’t let them clean out my e-mails and dump my files; there’s stuff in there I need.”

I’ve been thinking about Stamm and her computer, specifically about the many incarnations of publishing she has seen since 1951.

Charlie Mitchell is executive editor of The Vicksburg Post. Write to him at Box 821668, Vicksburg, MS 39182, or e-mail.

Her early experience here and at the Roanoke (Va.) World News was in the hot metal days.

Printing was accomplished by inking raised letters and pressing paper against lead molten into heavy page forms.

That was a smelly, slow, oily, messy process. Copy and photos had to be prepared carefully, because fixing mistakes was difficult if not impossible. Every word had to justify its existence, so each was chosen carefully. If people in the hot metal days didn’t have precise minds to start with, they had to adapt quickly.

Hot metal gave way to offset printing, here in 1970, which was faster and cleaner — but stories were still written on manual typewriters, edited in pencil. Stamm’s always been skinny, and the ancient camera she hauled around probably weighed about half as much as she did. For a story, she might take two photos, three or four if it was a big spread. Had to get everyone in position to get the shot and get it right. No do-overs.

By the late 1970s, we had electric typewriters and by the early 1980s we were typing on terminals. Our cameras were “modern” and used rolls of film with 24 frames. Stamm processed her own pictures and made her own prints.

When the Post moved to today’s facilities in 1996, there was yet another incarnation — computers on which completed pages were built in digital form. Later came digital cameras, with every click in full color and available for instant review.

This history is offered for no reason other than to put two of Stamm’s more outstanding qualities in context.

First, has been her insistence on accuracy and correct word usage, spelling and punctuation. It’s The Church of the Holy Trinity, Episcopal, for example, not Holy Trinity Episcopal Church. She’s one of the few people in Vicksburg who can spell hors d’oeuvre correctly without a dictionary. If Stamm interviewed you for an article, your name was spelled correctly in print. I like to think her penchant for precision rubbed off on some of the rest of us. If it didn’t, we heard about it. Stamm has never minded calling a slacker a slacker.

Second has been not only her willingness, but also her enthusiasm to embrace new technologies. I won’t say how old Laurin Stamm was when she got her first e-mail account, because I don’t know. My guess is, however, a lot of her contemporaries opted out of joining the e-everything age, citing their seniority.

Not Stamm.

There’s one more thing, and it’s relevance. Clearly, as Food editor, Stamm developed tremendous expertise, yet she always wanted to know what you were cooking and how. She never prepared copy to impress readers with how much she knew and she checked every recipe to make sure all ingredients were available here in Vicksburg. “No sense in telling people how to cook something if they can’t get what they need to cook it,” she said.

Looking forward, we expect Laurin Stamm to be a regular presence in the newsroom, writing for the Post whenever she wants to.

After all, there’s likely not a kitchen in this region without several of her recipes clipped and tucked in drawers or cookbooks. And there’s probably room for a few more.