State of City postponed while Mayor heals

ROSEBURG, Ore. – The State of the City 2024 address will be postponed while Mayor Larry Rich recovers from a recent heart attack.

Rich, who was elected Mayor of Roseburg in 1998, is recovering at home following surgery to install a stent in one artery but will need open-heart surgery by mid-February to clear blockage in his heart’s main artery.

He traditionally gives his State of the City speech at the first City Council meeting of the year, which falls on Monday, Jan. 8. However, Rich needs more time to heal before delivering the address -- tentatively rescheduled for Monday, Jan. 22.

“After some convincing, he agreed to delay it until he’s closer to 100%,” City Manager Nikki Messenger said Thursday.

He and wife Alpha were at Lake Tahoe over the weekend when he began not feeling well. On the morning of New Year’s Eve, they were supposed to return to Roseburg, but Mayor Rich didn’t feel up to it.

“I told Alpha, ‘I just don’t feel good enough to drive home. Something must be wrong,’ ” Rich said Thursday.

He said he thought his hernia had ruptured, but learned that wasn’t the case after going to the emergency room in South Lake Tahoe. That hospital rushed him by ambulance down to Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center.

“It turned out, doctors in Carson City said, ‘You had a heart attack three days ago,’ ” Rich said.

Rich had been in Roseburg on Thursday, Dec. 28. That night, he decided to go for a 45-minute evening walk. But Rich said he found he only wanted to walk for five minutes at a time. He didn’t feel chest pain or any other symptoms that he recognized, but simply felt unmotivated.

“It wasn’t being tired. It was just I didn’t care,” he said.

Rich was in the hospital from Sunday until Tuesday morning – turning 68 years old on Monday, Jan. 1. The couple returned home Wednesday after running into an ice and snowstorm and semitrailer-blocked road near McCloud, CA, Tuesday night. When traffic stopped, the vehicle slid off the road into a ditch. Alpha Rich shoveled their vehicle out of the snow because her husband is still in the first critical week of recovering from a heart attack and surgery – however, Larry Rich couldn’t help but pitch in a bit with the shoveling.

Standing in their kitchen Thursday afternoon, Alpha Rich laughed and said, “It wasn’t to help me out. He had to be in control.”

Mayor Rich will find a cardiologist and schedule open-heart surgery for the main artery that is 60% blocked.