ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, February 21, 1997 TAG: 9702210050
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: PULASKI
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
Kathryn Webb will become Pulaski County's new general registrar next month.
She will be sworn in at 10 a.m. March 10 at the county courthouse. The county Electoral Board voted to hire her, effective on that date, at a meeting Thursday morning.
"I appreciate the confidence you've given to me, and I promise you I'll do my best," Webb told the three board members after being informed that she was their unanimous choice.
She was chosen from 112 applicants to complete the unexpired term of Phyllis Hanks, which runs through March 1999. The position pays $31,690 a year.
The board dismissed Hanks Oct. 15 after she was charged with depositing three telephone refund checks totaling $1,721 to her personal account when they were meant for her office. She pleaded guilty to one embezzlement charge Dec. 16 and got a five-year suspended sentence.
She had been the voter registrar for six years, and was assistant registrar for six years before that. Electoral Board members Margaret Farris, Don Sheffey and Beth Ann Holmes secured temporary help for the office during the November election.
Webb was a member of the first class to graduate from Pulaski County High School in 1975. She and her husband, Bill Webb Jr., a Pulaski firefighter, have a daughter, Elizabeth, scheduled to graduate from the same school in 2000.
After graduating from Radford University, Kathy Webb worked for 16 years at NationsBank in Pulaski and for the past two years as a legal secretary with the Pulaski law firm of Gilmer Sadler Ingram.
She worked her way up in election posts from volunteering as an election official to head official and assistant official over the past 16 years. She was among those who worked through a recount in Pulaski County about six years ago.
"So I've held all the election positions up to this point," she said. "We were raised to believe voting was a privilege, and that's the way I've always looked at it," she said of her brother, Sandy, and herself.
Their parents, deceased, were Sanders M. Holston Sr. and Alma Holston. Alma Holston served on Pulaski Town Council for 12 years and was active in Republican Party politics.
LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Webb. color.by CNB