The day that Sandra Grigg started her first full-time secretarial job at City Hall, there was a shouting match in the hallway between City Administrator Jack McMeeken and City Clerk Harold Tolley.
It turned out they were arguing about her.
For two years, Tolley had been bringing in the shy teenager part-time to type up his backlog of City Council minutes.
Sandra's fiery 65-words-a-minute typing speed (achieved on an Underwood manual), combined with her ability to get things done with quiet efficiency, had so impressed the big cheeses that they were now fighting over who would get her.
Tolley thought he had first dibs because he hired Grigg.
McMeeken wasn't buying it. He was Tolley's boss.
After something approaching a knock-down-drag-out melee, McMeeken walked away victorious.
Sandra Grigg became his secretary.
Started 20 years before Manzo became a councillor
That, believe it or not, was 46 years ago.
Grigg (shown this morning at the municipal housing office on Albert Street) was working for the City for almost two decades before Frank Manzo ever became a councillor.
She's the longest-serving municipal employee in the Sault. At the end of this month, she'll will be retiring after 46 years in the employ of the City of Sault Ste. Marie.
Or 48 years, if you count the two years Sandra spent as a high school part-timer in a dark corner of the welfare department, churning out letter-perfect Council minutes on her clattery Underwood.
The day she burned Harold Tolley's toast
It was during her two years of part-time duties, from 1955 to 1957, that Grigg came close to burning down City Hall.
Tolley, as bosses were wont to do in those days, had instructed his young assistant to prepare him some toast. (We're trying to imagine Donna Irving making such a demand on Malcolm White.)
Sandra put the bread in the toaster and walked away.
And promptly forgot about it.
It was one of those old toasters without a thermostat, and soon smoke was billowing from the City Clerk's office.
The old City Hall on Queen Street was full of old wood and musty papers and the slightest hint of anything smoldering was taken very, very seriously.
"They kidded me about that forever," Grigg tells SooToday News.
Two dollars for a tramp
The conscientiousness with which Sandra approached her duties sometimes got her into trouble in those days.
Her colleagues in the welfare office recruited the young woman to staff the operation on Saturdays, and she felt badly for the down-on-their-luck transients who came in asking for help.
When one man pleaded that the food vouchers she provided weren't enough, Grigg opened her own purse and quietly handed him two dollars, a large sum in those days, coming from a part-timer who was still in high school.
When her superiors got wind of this act of kindness, Sandra was called on the carpet.
"I was told to never do that again," she recalls, "that they'll come back all the time."
Jack McMeeken talked her out of becoming a nurse
Truth be told, Sandra Grigg originally set out to be a nurse, not a secretary.
At one point, she travelled south and was accepted into Toronto General's nursing program.
Returning to City Hall with the news, Grigg was taken aside by Jack McMeeken, who talked her out of it.
And Grigg has no regrets.
Back then, a good secretarial position paid considerably more than a nursing job.
She had friends who went to nursing school, and then applied for clerical jobs at City Hall when they realized that nurses work long, odd hours while their better-paid secretarial colleagues waltzed away from their work at 4:30 or 5 p.m.
Typing a Nick Trbovich speech on Christmas Eve
Grigg's proficiency earned her a reputation around City Hall and plenty of special assignments from the mayors of the day.
She remembers spending one Christmas Eve typing Nick Trbovich's inauguration speech.
Sandra performed secretarial tasks for Ron Irwin, John Rhodes, Alex Harry, Herb Smale, Jim McIntyre and Don McGregor.
Wayne Newton, Engelbert Humperdinck, Tom Jones
In 1983, Griggs switched to the City's arenas division, working at Memorial Gardens during the golden years of concerts by the likes of Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck and Wayne Newton.
In the early 1990s, she moved again to the Social and Family Services Department, where we caught up with her earlier today.
Grigg says she has more years of work eligibility, but is retiring on May 30 to spend more time with her grandchildren and to finally escape the nine-to-five.
"I'm a spontaneous person," she tells SooToday.com.
"When something comes up, I'll be able to do it."
Roasted at the Marconi?
A few days before she leaves, Grigg's co-workers are planning a special tribute at the Marconi Club.
She's worried that the event will, quite justifiably, turn into a roast.
"I've pulled a lot of pranks," she says. "Now, it's pay-back time."
************************************************************ The following is the full text of a resolution moved by Councillors Peter Vaudry and Debbie Amaroso and passed by Sault Ste. Marie City Council on Monday, May 12, 2003:
Whereas it has been said that very few people stay with one employer during their working careers; and
Whereas very few individuals work as long as 46 years for the same employer; and
Whereas Sandra Grigg has worked for the Corporation of the City of Sault Ste. Marie for 46 years in various positions; and
Whereas Sandra Grigg has announced that she is retiring from the employ of the Corporation even though she has several more years of workplace eligibility;
Now therefore be it resolved that that City Council acknowledge Sandra Grigg for the number of years of dedicated service to the City and further that City Council congratulates and offers its best wishes to Sandra for many years of happiness in her retirement.
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