Receptionist Bev O’Brien retires after 19 years of service to Delaware County

By DUSTIN ENSINGER

Staff Writer

Delaware County has lost its voice.

For nearly two decades, those try­ing to reach some­one in county gov­ern­ment by phone have prob­a­bly heard the calm­ing and sweet voice of recep­tion­ist Bev O’Brien before being directed to the proper office or department.

“She just has the per­fect phone voice,” Delaware County Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Employee Rela­tions Man­ager Teri Mor­gan said.

But the county is now in the mar­ket for a new voice as O’Brien retired on Wednes­day, Novem­ber 28, after more than 19 years of ser­vice to the county. County offi­cials rec­og­nized O’Brien’s work at Monday’s (Novem­ber 26) com­mis­sion­ers session.

The 68-year-old is retir­ing due to upcom­ing changes in the Ohio Pub­lic Employee Retire­ment System.

“I felt that it was in my best inter­est to retire now,” she said.

O’Brien got her start with the county when a friend informed her of the open­ing. Given her past expe­ri­ence run­ning switch­boards and work­ing phones, she thought it would be a good fit.

“Most of my jobs have been phone ori­ented,” she said. “Most peo­ple tell me I have a good phone voice.”

Dur­ing her tenure, she has watched the county and its gov­ern­ment grow and evolve. When she was hired, she was given two hours of train­ing and worked under a board of com­mis­sion­ers made up of three farm­ers that spent very lit­tle time at the office.

Three admin­is­tra­tors and 12 com­mis­sion­ers later, county gov­ern­ment is more mod­ern and professionalized.

“Every­thing is so much more polit­i­cal than it used to be,” she said.

With pol­i­tics, often­times comes anger, and O’Brien has been on the receiv­ing end of many angry tirades. She always man­aged to main­tain her cool, though.

“Peo­ple appre­ci­ate the fact that I main­tain a pro­fes­sional man­ner,” she said.

She has also fielded many bizarre calls, includ­ing peo­ple offer­ing up their social secu­rity num­bers to her. Once, she had a woman that would often call and just burst out laugh­ing because she thought O’Brien sounded so much like Mar­i­lyn Monroe.

“She actu­ally made her hus­band call me,” O’Brien said.

Since she will not be field­ing dozens of calls each day, O’Brien plans to “just kind of enjoy life and take one day at a time.”

Her plans include some home redec­o­rat­ing, vol­un­teer work, attend­ing car shows and spend­ing time with her grand­chil­dren and friends.

Walk­ing out the door for the last time will be dif­fi­cult for O’Brien, who referred to col­leagues in the com­mis­sion­ers’ office as family.

“I’m sure there will be many, many tears,” she said.

Who­ever is ulti­mately cho­sen to replace O’Brien will have some very large shoes to fill, accord­ing to Delaware County Admin­is­tra­tor Tim Hansley.

“It’s hard to dupli­cate the set of tal­ents she brought to the county,” he said. “She has the abil­ity to make every­one feel very welcome.”

Posted by Gary Henery on Nov 28 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.