Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 14, 1991 TAG: 9103140037
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER/ NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Long
People have been known to look twice on the rare occasions when she ventured out hatless to make sure it was really her.
She even had a drawing of a hat beneath her signature on the letter she sent to friends and relatives announcing her plans to retire June 1, after 20 years as secretary to Pulaski's police chief.
"I've liked hats all my life," she said.
Larson started her letter by recalling the reaction of a 4-year-old neighbor to her husband retiring and being able to stay home with their daughter: "I wish my daddy would get tired and stay home with me."
"So-o-o . . .," Larson wrote, "after 20 years of service with Town of Pulaski, I'm tired too! As of June 1, 1991, I QUIT. "But instead of staying at home, I intend to visit each of you - so get ready. One of my friends nicknamed me `Go-Doris-Go-Go.' Now I will have time to Go, Go, Go!!!" she wrote in her distinctively artistic calligraphy.
Actually, Larson has been the secretary for five Pulaski police chiefs - the late C.E. Comer Jr., E.K. Burroughs, H.B. "Jack" Childress, Dan E. McKeever, and E.J. Williams.
Williams says she will be hard to replace.
The Police Department had only two vehicles when she started working there. Now it has 11. There were no car radios or beepers then, and the dispatcher would summon an officer by turning on a light atop the town hall.
An officer who needed help would beat on a lamp post with his night stick so others could follow the sound.
Larson, 64, did not seek the secretarial job. She had applied to be a crosswalk guard back in 1966.
"My husband was retired. I thought it would be a good idea if I got out of the house a little while," she said.
Later she learned that her husband, the late William A. Larson, had told Chief Comer not to hire her because he was on Town Council at the time.
But another councilman, Woodson Cummings, saw nothing wrong with a council member's spouse working for the town. One day when her husband was in the hospital, Woodson called her and asked if she still wanted the job.
Comer interviewed and hired her, but she never worked as a crosswalk guard. Comer's secretary resigned and he asked Larson to take that part-time position, which she did until 1969.
"They always said, if you get police blood in you, you wouldn't get away and it was true. I missed it," she said.
She came back in 1971 when the job was full time. "I wanted to come back part time. They said `No way!'" Three secretaries had been hired and had quit before Larson came back. She has held the job since.
A Snowville native, Larson was one of nine children. She worked at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant until World War II ended, taught for a year in Pulaski County, then became clerk-typist-switchboard operator at General Chemical, now called Allied Signal.
Her future husband, a chemical engineer, was her boss. But he said she could no longer work there after they were married.
She liked the job so much that she even worked part of her wedding day until the office manager told her to go home early because "I wasn't any good to them that day."
Larson jokes that she won her husband at a shooting match at C.V. Jackson's farm on Memorial Day 1953. Some of the men were shooting at targets and he bet her a steak dinner she couldn't hit the bull's eye.
He lost, but he won a good-night kiss when he drove her home that night. They were married a little more than a year later.
Her daughter, Nelia Ann Larson, a group human resource manager for Leggett stores in Hampton and Newport News, persuaded her that it was time to retire.
"I didn't really want to . . . I was ready to withdraw my resignation the day after I turned it in," she said. "So if I'm not happy I'm gonna blame her!"
She also has a stepdaughter, Jean Branscom, who lives near Fincastle. She will be visiting them as well as other relatives and friends after she retires.
Larson has never lacked for things to do, whether it is trimming the hedges around her stately 72-year-old Pulaski home, campaigning to get yellow ribbons in the windows of the town hall and private homes to welcome the troops back from the Persian Gulf, baking cakes for festive gatherings, being a community Crime Watch captain, making wreaths, or using her calligraphy for writing certificates, poems and other documents.
Not much of a joiner, she did become part of the Sunset Garden Club more than a year ago and also has been attending monthly dinners of the Business and Professional Women's Council.
"I ended up being name-tag chairman because of my calligraphy," she said.
She has gotten Deb Warren, the mayor's secretary, interested in calligraphy and plans to pass that job on to her.
"I volunteered her services," Larson said, laughing.
It is the people that Larson will miss most when she leaves her job, she said. "I enjoy people. I always have," she said. "Well, yes, I have mixed emotions about it, but my daughter says `It's time to go, Mom' . . . But anybody can be replaced and I know I can."
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB