THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 8, 1994 TAG: 9412060168
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 99 lines
FOR NEARLY FOUR DECADES, she was gatekeeper and protector for Norfolk's superintendent of schools. If you wanted to see the boss, you first had to deal with Mrs. Mason.
Since 1959, in her job as secretary to the superintendent, Betty Brantly Mason has fielded messages, soothed irate parents, arranged schedules and generally made life easier for five successive superintendents and one acting superintendent. Through years of flux and change, bosses and co-workers say, she has been the constant - capable, dependable, loyal.
But an era in the administration of Norfolk public schools has come to an end.
After a 42-year career with the school system, Mason, who just turned 62, officially retired last Wednesday. Someone else will be hired to do her job, but she really can't be replaced, co-workers said.
``I think Betty has become like an icon for Norfolk public schools,'' said Linda Steadman, who works in a nearby office on the 12th floor of the administrative building on City Hall Avenue. ``She's been a role model for a lot of people.''
She was a godsend for current Superintendent Roy D. Nichols Jr., who arrived as an outsider from Marietta, Ga., in July 1993.
``She knew when someone called whether it was important for me to take that call or not,'' Nichols said. ``She knew when something occurred in the system whether it would be of interest to the powers that be.
``Without her, or someone like her, the operation would come to a grinding halt.''
While superintendents have come and gone, Mason's longevity in the hectic job can be traced in part to an ability to adjust to the idiosyncrasies of her bosses.
``When you get a new superintendent you sort of study him and learn what he likes and you change,'' said Mason, a graying, dignified woman who guarded the superintendent's office with a no-nonsense demeanor but is really a softie at heart.
John J. Brewbaker, her first superintendent, refused to sign any letter that had an erasure on it, Mason said. That was in the days before copiers, when the most sophisticated office technology was a hand-cranked mimeograph machine. In those early days, she used typewriter carbon paper to make copies and shorthand to take dictation.
``It was discipline for me,'' Mason said. ``I learned to type without making mistakes.''
Her second superintendent, Edwin L. Lamberth, was more relaxed. ``He used me as a sounding board,'' Mason said. ``He would talk and pace and really just wanted to talk things through. So I listened.''
Superintendent No. 3, Albert L. Ayars, was imported from Spokane, Wash., the first from outside the system during her tenure. After learning of Mason's retirement, Ayars wrote in a Nov. 28 letter that she was ``the heart and soul of the office'' . . . ``the key figure, the metronome, in its smooth and efficient operation.''
No. 4, Gene Carter, Norfolk's first black superintendent, was an innovator, Mason said, constantly trying new programs and approaches. Nichols, she said, is proving himself to be an innovator.
``The superintendent's job is awesome,'' Mason said. ``They're just pulled by the community and parents, and you have to be true to yourself and your beliefs, and yet you have all these people to satisfy and so little money to do it.''
No matter how small or large the problem, Mason said, most people want to go straight to the superintendent. She's handled her share of telephone calls from angry parents.
``You learn when parents scream and yell into the phone that they really aren't upset with you,'' Mason said. ``I just let them vent. Usually, they'd apologize, and then you could help them.''
Mason said parents these days are much more likely to call to complain and that they seem less supportive of teachers and the schools.
When Mason, a Norfolk native, graduated from Maury High School in 1951, her ambition was to become a secretary - but not just a secretary.
``I wanted to be the best, and to get the top job,'' Mason said. ``Anybody can be a secretary, but not anybody can be a good secretary. You've got to have the desire.''
She began working with the school system her senior year, after landing a part-time secretarial job through a vocational office training class.
Two days after graduation, still only 17, she got a full-time position for 75 cents an hour as a clerk-stenographer in the school system's health and physical education administrative offices.
Except for two years from 1954 to 1956 when she left to have a baby, Mason has been with the schools.
In a system with more than 4,000 employees, only three other current employees have more years of service, school personnel officials say.
But the 12th-floor employees haven't seen the last of Mason. She has agreed to work part-time, at least for a while, to help ease a new secretary into the job and handle office work that has piled up.
In retirement, she hopes to spend more time with her mother, Helen Brantly, and her husband, Al Mason.
``There are so many things I want to do,'' she said. ``It seems my work has always come first.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MOTOYA NAKAMURA
At her retirement party, a slide show looked back on Betty Mason's
42-year career with the Norfolk school system.
by CNB