It's hard to pay tribute to Laurie and do her justice...

It is really hard to convey to anyone who didn't know Laurie what an incredible combination of humor and love she embodied. She was someone that you could talk to about anything, while at the same time was one of the funniest people I ever knew in my life. But her humor was hard to describe. She wasn't Joan Rivers doing shtick and telling stories or Lucy getting into madcap situations. She was more like Madeline Kahn in Clue - just constantly being funny in the way she moved, her quips, her retorts, her sarcasm, her asides. And like Madeline Kahn, she was sometimes funniest when she wasn't trying to be. She would just say or do something that would leave you on the floor laughing. She was very self-deprecating in her humor and would be the first one to point out an ironic personal foible, which was a sign of her confidence and self-possession that she could make fun of herself so easily. You could be talking about the most serious and distressing event and she would just whisper and aside and have you on the floor. Probably the most significant event that I lived through with Laurie was when my grandfather shot himself in front of me on her birthday May 20. 1998. At the time, she was my boss and my cubicle was feet from her office at AM Best. Laurie was one of the few people that ever really counseled me about that experience- most of my family members saw me as such a strong individual that I didn't need counseling about witnessing such a tragic and unexpected event. The fact that the anniversary of my grandfather's suicide would forever coincide with her birthday made me never forget her birthday again and would usually be celebrated with a special annual phone call where we covered her birthday and my trauma, usually in that order. She loved her kids very much and talked about them a lot. When they were younger she was always nervous and worried about their futures and I remember how relieved she was as she saw them both settle down and create families. She was extremely close to her brother that died of AIDS and often remarked that I reminder her of him. She talked about her dead brother and her two kids a lot with me. She often recounted stories about her mother who she curiously referred to as "Gertrude" more often than "Mom" or "Mother." She talked a lot about Rochester and reminisced about it a lot. She also liked to mention that her ex husband was from my hometown of Bethlehem. Another constant source of conversation was that the whole time we were at AM Best, she and Ron were investing their money for their retirement and then when they finally retired, something went awry with the investments but she always managed to spin a funny life teaching quip about the irony of all the years they went without fancy vacations to invest only to lose the money. She loved Ron a lot too and talked about him a lot. At work, (it seems unbelievable to me now, but it was the 1990s) there was pushback about her being married to an African American man. AM Best was lilly white back then. I remember she had some resentment from some bad treatement she experienced from coworkers about her choice of a mate, coworkers that aren't even worth remembering now. One funny day I do recall was when I returned from a trip to Cuba and had been taught a psychological parlor game where you ask someone what their favorite animal is and why. The psychological part of the game was that your favorite animal was the kind of mate you chose. I tried it out on all my coworkers while we were in the conference room waiting for Laurie, the leader, to arrive. So by the time she arrived, everyone in the room knew the significance of the parlor game. I asked her what her favorite animal was and why and she very seriously and solennly announced "Elephants because I like their big trunks." We all howled and she was so confused and seeing her with her deadpan Madeline Kahn face only made it funnier. She was a one of a kind person and I will miss her very much.