BERLIN – Officials congratulated longtime Town of Berlin employee Geneva Peters this week as she prepared to end a 45-year career.
Elected officials and dozens of town employees gathered Wednesday to celebrate Peters’ retirement after 45 years as the town’s billing supervisor.
“Through thick and thin, through all of the changes this community’s seen, we’ve always been able to depend on Geneva,” Mayor Gee Williams said.
Peters was hired as the town’s billing supervisor in October of 1973. Though it wasn’t a position she’d been trained for, Peters said that at the time she was just happy to get a job in Berlin.
“There weren’t many openings in Berlin,” she said. “I took it day by day. In the beginning, it was not what I wanted to do.”
She settled in however and came to love working for the Town of Berlin. Peters, who worked her last day Friday, said she would miss getting up in the morning to go to work. Tim Lawrence, the town’s electric utility director, said he’d miss her daily 7 a.m. phone calls advising him of potential electric issues.
“I’m just making sure I’m not the only one working,” Peters joked.
Natalie Saleh, the town’s finance director, thanked Peters for her decades of service.
“Thank you so much for your great work,” Saleh told Peters. “Enjoy your retirement.”
Williams, who read a proclamation recognizing Peters, praised her for leading by example.
“This is my first opportunity to know someone and to have worked with someone that had a career lasting four and a half decades,” he said.
He pointed out that working in billing, Peters had experienced the rise of technology as systems changed numerous times in recent years.
Peters, however, said the biggest change she’d seen during the last four decades was the growth of Berlin, a town that didn’t have a hospital or numerous subdivisions when she started working there.
“There were not that many in the beginning that lived here,” she said.
Peters said she’d decided to retire this year because she’d reached the right age. She’s looking forward to relaxing for a while.
“Maybe the next 45 years,” she said with a laugh.
