Retirement bound

By Barry Porterfield
Staff Writer

May 05, 2008 09:28 am

— A number of comrades from work and well-wishers from all over came together this week to honor a couple of people taking the retirement path after manning their different offices in Pauls Valley for about two decades.
Located right across the street from each other are the PV Police Department and the central office for the Garvin County commissioners in the courthouse.
This weekend’s Brickfest event was the last day on the job for Lt. Jeff Jarman, while the work week was it for Merline McCurley as a kind of do everything worker for the county group.
For both Jarman and McCurley the time was right when it came to spending more time with family and checking out some other things in their lives.
“I’ve got other career opportunities I want to pursue, and I want to spend time with my family,” Jarman said.
“I’ve also got some honeydews to do,” he said defining those as things around the house or “anything that the wife wants.”
Jarman, the son of a former PV police chief, started his law enforcement career here in late 1980 before spending some time at the Ada police and Garvin County sheriff’s departments.
Then in August 1988 he got the chance to return to his hometown police department and has been here ever since.
“It was not an easy decision to make but the opportunity was there,” Jarman said referring to retirement and the combination of his police pension, more time with his family and other job possibilities.
“I look forward to not being on call 24 hours a day. I won’t have to worry about what’s going on down here,” he said about the police station.
“I’ve been at the movies, ball game or wherever and if the phone rings I got to leave. Now I can do what I want to do.”
Jarman’s boss, Police Chief Dennis Madison, knows the departure will have a definite impact on the local department.
“It will be tough to replace someone with the kind of experience he has, and everyone in town knows him,” Madison said.
“He has numerous thank you’s and commendations throughout his file. He has an extensive record and he’s very street-wise. He provides a lot of good information to new officers, which we’re going to miss.
“I appreciate everything he’s done for me since I’ve been here and the department. I hate to see him leave,” the chief said.
As for McCurley the retirement gig is about getting more done around the house and spending time with her 20-year-old daughter Samantha.
“I’m going to miss everybody. We’re a family here in the courthouse,” she said.
“In a way I’m going to leave my family to go to my family.
“I’ve put my job before my daughter. Now my daughter is going to come first.”
McCurley will also jump into one of her favorite activities, garage sales, while also taking time to visit her other daughter and two grandchildren in New Mexico, along with siblings in Texas and Tennessee.
“I’m going to do a little bit of everything. I’ve got so much to do but at my pace,” she said.
McCurley is quick to stress the duties of her position in the county commissioners’ office include a much longer list than most people realize.
“People don’t realize what goes on in the county commissioners’ office,” she said.
“They think all we do is take complaints on roads and bridges.”
Not even close, she said, as all the paperwork for anything purchased for use in the three districts — invoices, purchase orders, reports, etc. — go through the office where McCurley has worked for the last 20 years.
There are plenty of other duties required of the office including correspondence for the commissioners, as well as all the inventory for the courthouse itself, health department and the equipment for each of the commissioners.
Then there’s things like keeping up with grants, community service sentencing and a variety of other programs.
Not an easy job but even tougher in the past.
“When I started here everything was written by hand,” McCurley said.
“I was one of the first ones to get a computer here in the courthouse.”