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'Voice of Mercy' hangs up her headset
After a nearly 40-year career, "The Voice of Mercy," as she is called by her friends and colleagues, is hanging up her headset for the last time.
Local resident Jeanne Howard recently retired after working at Mercy Health Center of Fort Scott in a few different capacities since 1969. She spent 30 years operating the switchboard at the local health center.
A group of Howard's friends, family members and coworkers assembled for a special reception in her honor Thursday at Mercy. Howard was also honored and acknowledged with a "21-phone salute" on Thursday, when a group of her coworkers stood in two lines across from each other and raised single telephone handsets over their heads, forming an arch that Howard walked under as the group cheered. Her last day of work was Friday.
Howard said she first started her career at Mercy in the business office and also worked with the posting of accounts and in the hospital's registration office. The aspect of her job that Howard said she would miss the most from her long career at Mercy are the many people with whom she developed friendships and relationships during her time there.
"I'll miss the people," she said. "There have been lots of people and lots of good times."
When looking back on her long career at Mercy, Howard said she rarely called in sick and only missed work due to bad weather on two occasions.
"Over the years, I haven't missed a whole lot," she said.
Howard said her initial reaction to the small crowd of her friends, family members and colleagues who organized the Thursday reception was one of surprise, and that she was glad to be honored for her years of service at Mercy.
"I didn't have any idea this was going on," she said. "I guess I must have done something right."
According to Mercy Health Center Communi-cation Supervisor Kyle Tweedy, a colleague of Howard's for seven years, her skills and work ethic, among other valuable traits that she possessed, will be sorely missed.
"She's such a wonderful person," Tweedy said. "She was always on time -- a model employee. She was always calm in a crisis, she handled them well and she knew all the (telephone) numbers so if you needed to know one, she could just rattle it off to you off the top of her head. She'd be employee of the month every month of the year if I did that."
Georgia Brown, a colleague and friend of Howard's for the last five years, called her "a very fair person," "pretty upbeat," and "very family-oriented."
"I think she'll be looking forward to that (family)," Brown said.
Howard said when she retires, she plans to spend time around her house and with her new great-grandchild, but admitted that she will still visit her old friends and colleagues at Mercy on occasion.
"I'm sure I'll be back to see the people," she said.
Retirement will also come with an adjustment period, especially after spending so many years in the same work routine, Howard said.
"I'll probably wake up Monday morning and think I'm late for work," she said.