Windhams Rhoades Retires

WINDHAM - Her last official day has come and gone as Account Clerk, but the title barely scratches the surface of what Bette Rhoades has meant, and will continue to mean, to the people of Windham.

Rhoades retires on October 31, closing the books after 25 years of keeping the town running fiscally smooth rather than clunking along clankety-clank.

“I have nothing but praise for Bette’s dedication,” says town supervisor Thomas Hoyt who would know first-hand.

“She started working here before things got all cranked up in Windham with so many more moving parts,” Hoyt says, referring to multiple infrastructure and community changes occurring over the past quarter century.

“Bette was called the Special Projects coordinator during all the craziness going on with roads and sewer, setting up all the billing and collecting.

“She kept track of everything with water and sidewalks, the ambulance. Fixed assets. She was also the supervisor’s secretary,” Hoyt says.

“Bette would go to the Coalition of Watershed Towns meetings with [the late town supervisor T. Patrick Meehan], helping break ground on developing that program,” working with all watershed communities in the complex interactions with the Department of Environmental Protection.

“You name it, she was it,” Hoyt says, eventually earning Rhoades the second of two nicknames she has been given over the years.

“Yes, it’s true,” Rhoades says, laughing. “I was the Sewer Guru,” which may have been, depending on your perspective, better or worse than the first.

“Bette grew up around here,” Hoyt says. “Her family goes back a long time in the Big Hollow valley which is what Maplecrest was called before it was Maplecrest. So she knows everybody and has a lot of institutional knowledge that you can’t teach.”

Rhoades, growing up a West, became the subject of light-hearted poetry. “My dad was good friends with her dad,” Hoyt says, grinning. 

“When she was little, Bette would wander over to the house, or whatever. My dad called her Bette West, the biggest pest in Maplecrest.”

That playful peskiness evolved into pecuniary persistence, not always a popular attribute with the folks obliged to pay the countless bills she prepared, but one paramount to pecuniary peace and prosperity.

Rhoades, in her career, was reliably precise, answering the phone at the office with the same country friendliness. “Good morning. Town of Windham, This is Bette speaking. Can I help you?”

It will be strange, not hearing that familiar greeting. And her anything-but-perfunctory professionalism was also evident in her retirement letter, submitted on October 7 to the town.

Rhoades wrote, “I would like to thank you for the opportunities, teachings and support that you have provided me over these many years with the township.

“I am more than grateful for the guidance and encouragement in pursuing my growth both professionally and personally.

“During the remaining weeks, I will complete all of my pending tasks. Further, I am willing to continue to assist in the training of my successor on an “as-needed” or part-time basis.

“I assure you that a seamless transition will be properly completed. It is with great sadness and melancholy that I submit this letter but wish to assure you that I will enjoy every moment of my new life of leisure.”

Living in the lap of luxury will include a retirement party happening at the Church of the Assumption, November 9, a journey to Greece with her hubby Bob, next year, and then…what?

“To be perfectly honest,” Rhoades says, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Imagine that. Maybe clean my house.”

True to her word, Rhoades spent her final official workdays showing the ropes to her successor, Jessica Leto, an ongoing commitment..

No surprise there. And the 1968 Windham-Ashland-Jewett school graduate will, more likely than not, keep on doing what she has done on the job.

“I learned it,” Rhoades says, “as I did it.”