Staff writer
Peabody City Clerk Stephanie Lago, who stepped down from her position Friday after 17 years of service, already knows how she will be spending her retirement.
“First thing I’m doing is I’m turning off the alarm clock,” Lago said last week. “I’m not going to worry about that.”
Afterward, she plans to catch up on various activities.
“I’ve got mounds of home projects, art projects, geneology projects,” Lago said. “I’ve got so much stuff that I’ve put off that I’m looking forward to doing.”
Among her various memories as clerk is one involving calls to police about an escaped gander.
“Somehow or another, this one goose got loose, and people were calling into the police department,” Lago said. “So all day it was goose sightings and hearing, ‘We have a loose goose on S. Olive.’ It was comical because you could see his whole path.”
While some memories are fun and exciting, others are not. “I was at work the morning the bombing occurred on 9/11, and people were bringing in TVs and we were plugging them up and watching it all on TV as a community,” Lago said. “I’ll always remember that day.”
What she said she would miss most are people.
“Over the years you develop friendships with these people,” Lago said. “It’s lazy on my part because I didn’t have to go to people’s homes to visit them. Everyone came here to see me once a month. I’m going to miss that closeness and the individual contact with people.”