ORANGE : City Clerk Decides 16 Years is Enough

From her seat in front of the City Council dais, she’s watched six mayors be sworn in, and she has won four elections herself, but last week City Clerk Marilyn J. Jensen packed up and retired after 30 years of serving the public.

“I really feel like I’m going on vacation,” said Jensen, who sat in an office empty of everything except the iron press that makes the seal of the city. “It will hit me soon and I’ll cry for three weeks.”

Jensen, 61, started her career in 1965 as a clerk and typist at the Orange Public Library. She soon moved over to City Hall because, she explained, “as much as I loved books, I missed working with people.”

She worked in various offices and was appointed to the city clerk post in 1979, winning election in 1980. Her very first day, she was faced with a malfunctioning voting machine and a deputy clerk she had to fire.

“I was terribly nervous,” she recalled. But she made it through and left her mark, both professionally and personally, on the office.

“She has a very strong personality, but she’s very straightforward,” said Cassie Cathcart, the deputy city clerk who by all accounts is a shoo-in for appointment to the post. “You know where you stand with her.”

Jensen’s lasting imprint will be the new technology she brought into the office, employees said. And they all noticed how seriously she took her duties throughout the 16 years of her tenure.

“When you sign a document for the city, it’s an awesome responsibility,” Jensen said. “It still amazes me that my signature means something.”

She will miss the people she works with but will not bemoan the fact that she no longer has to get to the office by 7 a.m. every day, she said.

But she has no intention of lazing around. She and her husband Robert plan to travel to Europe and she already has lined up volunteer work at St. Joseph Hospital and the library.

The transition will be tough nonetheless.

“It’s like pulling barnacles off to get me out of here,” she said. “It’s like cutting part of myself off.”