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Longest-serving Trumbull employee likes making people feel welcome
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Until the end of last month, if a person had reason to come to the Trumbull County Board of Elections on Youngstown Road Southeast, they probably encountered the smiling and welcoming person of Judi Toles.
It was no accident that her desk was located close to the entrance.
“I enjoyed making people feel welcome and comfortable,” said Toles, who retired at the end of January from the job she held 44 years, making her at the time the longest-serving county employee.
But Toles, of Warren, had another career before Dr. William J. “Doc” Timmins, longtime Trumbull County Democratic Party chairman, talked her into joining the elections-board staff in September 1971. She worked with Timmins at Warren General Hospital for seven years — first in nutrition, then in the hospital’s administrative offices.
She enjoyed her job at the Eastland Avenue hospital, now run by Mercy Health as St. Joseph Warren Hospital, because one of her unofficial roles was “hostess,” meaning she greeted visitors and made them feel welcome.
But the elections board never had a black employee and needed someone to fill an opening, Toles said.
Timmins started asking her to make the move in February 1971. She held off until September because she liked what she was doing at the hospital, Toles said.
“When I got there that first fall election, I dove right in. I missed the hospital, but I made the transition, and it just flowed,” she said.
In the years to come, she became more involved with the Democratic Party, becoming a precinct central committee member in 1975. She is also the party’s recording secretary. Her party affiliation also brought her some of the more memorable moments of her life.
When Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, came to Warren in the 1970s, she was there at W. D. Packard Music Hall to greet him and serve as hostess for the big event.
Same thing for President Jimmy Carter, when he traveled to Cleveland, and when his wife, Rosalynn, came to the VIP, an Eastwood Mall Complex dining, dancing and entertainment facility. She also attended an event that allowed her to see President Bill Clinton up close and hold hands with his wife, Hillary, and get a hug.
Perhaps the greatest experience, however, was attending Barack Obama’s first presidential inauguration. “We really enjoyed every minute of it,” she said of the group that traveled to Washington for the event.
“It was a blessing to work on his campaign as an African American woman,” she said.
Becky DePanicis, a longtime co-worker at the board of elections, said Toles “really lives her Christian faith. She’s very active in her church and is always there with a prayer. When my parents died four days apart, she kind of served as a surrogate mother.”
“I was the mother, grandmother, cousin, aunt of the office,” Toles, 76, said, adding that most of the older women in the office are about the age of her children.
Toles made 741/2 cents per hour when she first started at the board of elections. She had job offers at GM Lordstown and Packard Electric during those booming times in the 1970s, but “the money” wasn’t the most important thing to her, she said.
“I never lost my home or my car. We made it,” she said of her and her three children.
Close to 20 years ago, when she was in her 50s, her first grandchild, Deryck Toles, came to live with her when he was in 7th grade.
He would ultimately achieve in academics and football at Warren G. Harding High School and Penn State University.
His football career ended after an injury while playing for the Indianapolis Colts in the NFL. But he followed that up soon after by creating the nonprofit organization Inspiring Minds, which gives opportunities to inner-city Warren youth to help them achieve in high school, college and life.
Judi Toles said Deryck was always self-motivated to achieve and cared about the success of others, hosting a number of visits for other young men from Warren while he was attending Penn State.
“He wanted to be a mentor because he didn’t have a father figure in his life. Thank God for Coach [Gary] Barber and Coach [Steve] Arnold,” Judi said of the head coach and assistant coach at Harding, who were among the people he admired.