Q&A with Laura Kurman Who is Retiring from Wayside Multi Service Center After More Than 30 Years
For more than three decades, Laura Kurman has been working to help those in need in Watertown. She retired as Executive Director of the Wayside Multi Service Center at the end of June, and looked back on her time.
Kurman spoke with Watertown News Editor Charlie Breitrose in her office at the house on North Beacon Street that serves as the offices for the Wayside Multi Service Center in early June. She began working in that building before it was even Wayside, back when it was part of the City of Watertown.
See a portion of the interview with Kurman below. Paid subscribers of Watertown News’ Patreon can listen to the entire interview. Click here for more information.
Watertown News: Thank you for sitting down with me, Laura. We’re talking because you’ve come to the end of quite a long career with the Wayside Multi Service Center in Watertown. And since a lot of people know you or may not know you, but probably know Wayside’s contributions to Watertown, I was thinking it’d be a great way to sit down with you and hear about your career and what’s going to be coming up for Wayside. It’s probably hard to sum up, but what, when you look back, what do you do you have what do you feel proudest about when you look at your Wayside time?
Laura Kurman: That is a good question. I just hit 35 years last week. Yeah, May 29. And so there’s a lot to think back on, but also a lot to finish up. And maybe never feel like I finished up, but passing on as much as I possibly can. I have a lot of things that I’m proud of, so I’ll just list a few, but sure I certainly have to speak first, of being proud of my staff and past and present for all these years, incredible people that have come through here worked so hard and diligently and dedicatedly to the people of the community and in so many different ways, and also a lot of interns. I mean, just so many people have come through, more than I can count for sure. So I’m always I’m really proud when I sit and listen to them and see them in meetings, or hear about what they’ve done and know that they’ve built these strong relationships in the community that I had a part of helping to begin, and then they went off and built their own.
WN: Is this what you set out to do when you were in college? How did you come about to this field?
LK: I have, I pretty much my whole career, has been working with youth and families in nonprofit human services. I didn’t start out that way. I wanted to be an anthropologist in college, but that changed quickly because of, interestingly, a statistics course that was really difficult, and I just sort of went, “Well, maybe this is not what I want to do,” and I switched to social work. And so it’s been a long time. I don’t know that I knew that I would want to work with youth and families. So I have done that. It’s just a different ways that things have gone through the years.
WN: What brought you to Watertown and Wayside specifically?
LK: I was in Philadelphia, and we I lived in California, and then my husband and I moved here to be closer to family, and I interviewed here, and I got the job. And at the time, we were the Human Services Department for the Town. So I was hired as a Town — now City, it’s called — employee. And after a few years, things changed. In the early ’90s, the Human Services Department was no longer and we became part of a private nonprofit, which then became, very soon after, with Wayside, and that’s where I stayed.
WN: Were you always in this house?
LK: I literally am in the same office. It looks a little nicer. It was painted.
Laura Kurman, middle, received a lifetime achievement award at the Watertown Youth Coalition’s Community Spirit Awards. Also pictured are Program Coordinator at Wayside Youth & Family Support Network Stephanie Sutherland-Ramsey (left) and Vice President of Community Services at Wayside Youth & Family Support Network Andrea Salzman. (Courtesy of Wayside Multi Service Center)
