Outgoing Lawrence Co. official elects to relax

By Jeanne Starmack

From presidents Kennedy to Obama, her career has spanned almost five decades.

NEW CASTLE, Pa. — It looked like just another day at work Friday for Marlene Gabriel, though it was anything but.

She was tucked away in her office that morning at the Lawrence County Government Center, surrounded by papers on her desk and taking phone calls as usual.

But there was an undercurrent of excitement for her, too. Because after 48 years on the job for the county, first in the voter registration office and later as director of voter registration and elections, it was her last day.

In the outer room at the office, Gabriel’s staff, office manager Susan Kite, Evelyn Antuono and Jennifer Marburger shook their heads and wondered: What will it be like without her?

The county commissioners are already searching for someone to fill her post, but it’s not going to be one of them, her staff assured.

“Nobody wants my job — isn’t that sad,” said Gabriel, looking up from her desk with a little smile.

Well, the job’s not an easy one.

From the first election she worked — President John F. Kennedy’s in 1960, when she was 19 — to the last, President Barack Obama’s Nov. 4, she’s had plenty of what she calls “challenges.”

Those challenges began with the Kennedy election, when she helped deal with a barrage of people on the last day of voter registration.

A campaign stop Kennedy made in New Castle prompted the crush, she believes. People lined up at both entrances to an old house next to the courthouse that used to serve as county offices, including voter registration’s.

They lined up starting at 8 a.m. and the line never died down until well after 4 p.m. The office stayed open late to make sure everyone got to register, she said.

In the years that followed, she remembers, the office workers typed street lists of voters and ran copies on a mimeograph machine.

“And then we’d sort them — everything was done by hand,” she said. “We’d hire extra people, — 12 at a time. We didn’t have mail registration until 1975, so it was all done by hand.”

All the registrations were in two large, heavy books, she said.

Now, she said, everything is updated and computers make their jobs much easier.

Election results are available on the county’s Web site now, which saves “a lot of phone calls and people coming in,” she said.

From 1965 until 1975, Gabriel worked part time while she and her husband, Norman, reared three children. They are George, now a cardiologist at Allegheny General Hospital who lives in Wexford; Norman, a physical therapist who lives in New Castle; and Lee Ann Gabriel, a teacher at the Lawrence County Career and Technical Center who also lives in New Castle.

In 1988, the county combined the voter registration and the elections offices into one. Gabriel became director of elections in 1990.

She was in charge of twice the work after the two offices combined, and in charge of more than 500 poll workers.

“After one election is done, it’s time to start over,” she said.

Yes, technology updated the job, making it easier and faster, but it sometimes presents an updated set of challenges as well.

In the November election, counters that tallied votes in some of the electronic voting machines weren’t programmed correctly. Instead of counting totals from each machine, the elections workers had to count flash cards, Gabriel said — a recording of each individual vote. It took much longer. Results weren’t timely on the Web site, and Gabriel was there from 6 a.m. until the wee hours — almost 24 hours, she said.

Did she decide then it was time to retire? No, her reasons are typical. “I’m getting older, and I want to enjoy my family,” said Gabriel, a New Castle resident who has four grandchildren.

She’ll miss her staff and all the friends she’s made over the years, she said.

She’s looking forward to relaxing, though, and “not having to defrost my car” — unless it’s to make a trip to Mountaineer Casino Racetrack and Resort in West Virginia. “I like to play the slots.”

In looking back, she said, she’s going to miss the work too — but she takes pride that she and her staff resolved “every one” of those challenges.

starmack@vindy.com