Susan Fenton was two years out of Northeastern High School and a fresh graduate of then Clark County Technical Institute’s secretarial science program when Margaret Riley hired her in the records office.
“She was so organized,” Riley said. “She could handle anyone who came in.”
When she became Mrs. Zelinski and a mother, Riley said, “she really took care of her girls as well.”
Zelinksi remembers packing books for transfer to the new Library Resource Center, opening the Downtown Center and years with registrar Jill Russell.
“There were only the two of us in the office,” said Russell, who is now retired. “It involved everything: registration, transcripts, counseling, anything the students needed other than their classes.”
Zelinksi also handle the chaos of graduation.
Said Russell: “I don’t know what I would have done without her.”
As computerization brought change and finally gave way to online registration, Zelinski said, her three daughters “all went to school here and transferred to other colleges and my husband came back to get a degree in computers that helped him get his job.”
Her experience, coupled with living in Enon, made her the right person to help open the college’s Greene Center in February of 2007.
“We had a few moments,” she said. “One time the door wouldn’t lock in the evening and I had to go call the vice president.”
Zelinski, 58, said she decided to retire now to avoid being “that person” who stays too long.
Her sister, Sharon LeMaster, countered with another thought about the measure of her service: “If you could line up the people she has helped along the way into one line, how far would that reach?”
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368
About the Author