Kathleen, our BJ lass in Ireland

Kathy Fraze on the burren in Ireland

Kathy Fraze, who retired from the BJ in 2012 after 39 years working in Old Blue, is enjoying a vacation in Ireland. The photo shows Kathy on the burren, an amazing Irish landscape.

Kathy’s grandmother, Ruth Kane, was a long-time Massillon Independent City Hall and police reporter. Her parents were a steelworker and a maternity ward nurse in Massillon.

The Bowling Green journalism graduate was on the State Desk run by the late Pat Englehart in the 1970s.

Kathy married fellow Bowling Green graduate and Canton native Bruce Larrick, a BJ reporter who died in 2007 after 20 years on the Philadelphia Inquirer national desk. They have a son, Bryan, who lives in New York City and illustrated Kathy’s books about police detective Jo Ferris which have “Final” in all their titles.

Kathy’s other books are based on “letters” from her dog to “Pops” -- Mike Needs, a former BJ assistant managing editor who is out West with the U.S. Forestry Service.

As for the Burren (Irish: Boireann, meaning "great rock"), it is a karst-landscape region or alvar in northwest County Clare in Ireland. It is one of the largest karst landscapes in Europe,  about 150 square miles and is surrounded by the villages Ballyvaughan, Kinvara, Tubber, Corofin, Kilfenora and Lisdoonvarna. It is bounded by the Atlantic and Galway Bay on the west and north.

Three quarters of Ireland's species of flowers are in the Burren.

The rolling hills of Burren are composed of limestone pavements with criss-crossing cracks known as "grikes", leaving isolated rocks called "clints". The region supports arctic,  Mediterranean and alpine plants side-by-side. 

The limestones formed as sediments in a tropical sea approximately 350 million years ago.


The Burren is one of the finest examples of a glacio-karst landscape in the world. 

Kathy on Kilkee Island with her BJ friend