THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 4, 1995 TAG: 9506010072
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K7 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: MY JOB
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
VINA B. CLIFTON started out keeping track of $3,500 a day, back 28 years ago when that was a lot of money. Now, she accounts for more than $30,000 a day, every day. In dimes and quarters.
Clifton, 58, has been the accountant at the Virginia Beach-Norfolk Expressway since the day the toll road opened in December 1967. She plans to retire at the end of this month, after closing out the books for the last time on the highway, which has been toll-free since Wednesday.
There's never been a disaster on her watch. Never a robbery - knock on wood - and the few times the books haven't balanced, the problem has been accounted for quickly.
Clifton spends eight hours a day making sure everyone else's math is right. She checks the people who check the toll-takers' computations, making sure the daily bank deposits match what's written on the revenue line.
It may seem like dull work, but Clifton loves it. It's different enough every day - ``one day I could be processing manifests, another counting tokens'' - but still predictable enough to suit her orderly nature.
``My job has been my life for the last 28 years,'' she said.
But now, Clifton is ready to move on.
``I'm going to miss my work,'' she said, quickly adding, ``I think I'm ready to go on with another part of my life now and do something different.''
Clifton spends most of her time in a small cubicle in the back office of the little building next to the toll plaza.
She has photos of her four kids and five grandchildren on the wall and top of her file cabinet. The poster of Historic Harpers' Ferry is meant to remind her of her sister who died last year - some time after Clifton managed to go with her to the city she had always wanted to see.
On the back wall is a poster of Clifton's dream city, Toronto. She's never left the country but hopes to get to Canada some day.
She doesn't have a window now, although when she was younger and had less responsibility, she used to face one. Back then, she watched Mount Trashmore go up and would stare at the four lanes of tarmac and wonder when the next car would go by.
Clifton started working for the Department of Transportation in July 1967 as a clerk-typist B at the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel.
She will work at the expressway about three more weeks before her office is torn down. The wrecking ball is due within a month, a day or two after Clifton takes her posters, photos and plaques of appreciation home.
``I'll be watching them tear this down,'' she said. ``It's like an era gone by.''
She's not maudlin about the end of the tolls and her career. More like resigned. But she admits she's starting to feel a bit sentimental.
``It's sinking in now, the closer it gets,'' she said. ``I didn't think it was going to bother me, but it has bothered me.''
People don't realize how much work has been involved in collecting the tolls, she said. Pitching a quarter in is just the beginning of the process, not the end, as most people think.
The toll collectors have to tally how much they've collected during their shifts, then turn the paperwork in to Clifton's ``girls'' who check the math and make sure everything's accounted for. The records aren't computerized, so Clifton's staff has to check everything by hand.
Then Clifton looks over what her staff has done to make sure the accounting matches the sum the Brinks truck picked up that day. There are the quarterly and annual reports to Richmond to oversee, the four staff members to manage, the manifests to record.
``I stay busy, I really do,'' she said. ``I very seldom ever take my breaks.''
The work doesn't stop just because the accounting staff goes home at night. The money keeps pouring in, three shifts a day, every day of the week. , All in dimes, quarters and tokens. Monday's are the busiest because there's Friday, Saturday and Sunday's collections to tally.
The best thing about retiring, Clifton said, is that she'll be able to spend more time with her husband Walter and on the things she likes to do: sleeping a little later, working in her garden, being able to come home from weekend vacations on Monday instead of rushing back on Sunday afternoons.
``I'm hoping I can slow down now. I really am,'' she said.
Clifton plans to take the whole summer off, and then maybe volunteer at a local hospital. Her husband was sick a few years ago and she was always so impressed by the volunteers who combed a sick woman's hair or held a lonely man's hand for a few minutes.
``It just seems so rewarding,'' she said. ``I always felt like I wanted to do something to help somebody.''
The one thing Clifton is pretty sure she won't be doing in her retirement is driving the Virginia Beach-Norfolk Expressway. She hasn't driven it to work since 1985, when the road got too busy and the traffic too scary.
Even when it's free, Clifton said she'll probably keep taking the back route. That way she won't have to look at the spot that was her home away from home for 28 years. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
CHARLIE MEADS/Staff
Vina B. Clifton, 58, has been the accountant at the Virginia
Beach-Norfolk Expressway since the toll road opened in December
1967.
by CNB