ONCE UPON A TIME

It’s been a year ago this month that I resigned from the Board of Directors of AHRC Suffolk. It was my job that was at one time my second job and quickly morphed into my only job.

Over the years as I attended board meetings, conferences, committee meetings and functioned as both director and a two-time president for six years I met a lot of great people, people I loved and called my friends.

Every Tuesday morning I would go to the agency and sign checks for the agency as the two signatures for checks over $7,500 needed for authorization. As I entered the building that sat like a fortress on Veteran’s Memorial Highway in Bohemia, NY, I would greet the many people that who staffed the agency on a first name basis. I was once told that my presence as a board member made staff uneasy as a whole, and this troubled me exceedingly.

I started to come in on a Tuesday and greet the receptionist first by her first name and as I walked down the office aisle I tried to leave them laughing. There were quite a few that I left that way. It seemed each of them had something we could share jokingly, one was a troublemaker, one I advised about her new husband doing the cleaning to check under the rug and one I would ask about the grandchild she had.

I miss them. I miss their faces that lit up, their laughs and their kindness, their decency and the fact that they were hard workers dedicated to their jobs servicing people with disabilities. God bless them.