Nelson to Leave Windham Government

A teary moment was shared by Windham town officials as the retirement of longtime bookkeeper Cynthia Nelson was formally announced. Among those on hand were (seated) Ms. Nelson and (standing, left to right) highway superintendent BJ Murray, councilman Steve Walker, sole assessor Richard Tollner, bookkeeper-in-waiting Amanda Jones, account clerk Jessica Leto, town supervisor Thomas Hoyt, court clerk Karen Matteo, councilman Wayne VanValin and town clerk Bonnie Poehmel.

WINDHAM - There was a moment of respectful reluctance when Windham government leaders received a letter of retirement from longtime bookkeeper Cynthia Nelson.

Town supervisor Thomas Hoyt read the missive into the record, at a recent meeting, then paused before turning to his council colleagues and asking, “should we accept this or deny it?”

Everybody agreed her departure should be flatly rejected which promptly caused Nelson to cry, not because they were negating her wishes, but rather, wishing she wouldn’t go.

“This is a hard one to accept,” Hoyt said, noting Nelson’s 37-plus years of consecutive service to the community and numeric meticulousness.

“I’ve always enjoyed numbers,” Nelson said. Her career story, as she told it, is that she was five years old when she started working for the town.

Not wanting to mess with such a delicate issue, officials thanked Nelson for her attention to detail, joined in a round of applause and left it at that.

Nelson’s final day in the office will be June 26, setting the stage for a fond farewell party and time to breathe in the roses.

In an interview following the council session, Nelson recalled how she skipped kindergarten to begin learning the ropes at the town hall.

Not really. She did most of her growing up in the high hills of the town of Lexington after her family moved from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to lands originally settled by her great grandmother.

‘I was going into the fourth grade. It was the first time I ever rode a school bus,” Nelson says, having hoofed it to class in the Big City.

Home was a little bit out in the sticks, on the edge of two school districts, meaning she attended Windham-Ashland-Jewett, graduating in 1983.

“If I’d lived a mile further down the road, I would have had to go to Hunter-Tannersville,” Nelson said. The Wildcats loss was the Warriors gain.

She was a cheerleader for the basketball team and played softball, also sending wooden pins flying with her sisters Kathryn and Nancy at the bowling alley along South Street that is now a place of memory.

Computation ran in the family. Nelson’s mother, in the 1970’s, operated a children' s shop on Main Street in Windham, in the heart of downtown.

“It used to be Miller Brothers Department Store. I would walk up after school and also help her on weekends,” Nelson reminisced.

Never straying far from the mountains or enumeration, Nelson went to college for business administration, economics and accounting.

“I wasn’t sure exactly what, but I knew I wanted to do something in business,” she says, unexpectedly becoming a Jill-of-all-trades.

Nelson took a job in various offices at the municipal hall, sharing her talents with the bookkeeper, assessor, the court, and then- town supervisor T. Patrick Meehan.

Two years into her apprenticeship, those duties were condensed. Three-and-a-half decades later, being an integral part of the community’s infrastructure transformation, she is bidding adieu to digits.

It remains to be seen how long that goodbye lingers. “I truly enjoyed what I did and I worked with a really good group of people,” Nelson says.

She has been preparing her bookkeeper-in-waiting, current staffer Amanda Jones, and is thinking about perhaps again hitting the links.

Nelson was the oft-repeated club champion at Colonial Golf Course in Tannersville, solid off the tee and smooth around the greens.

There is no rush to decide. “I have a bucket list of destinations, nothing right away, something that’s different,” Nelson says.

“Mostly what I want to do is say ‘Thank You’ to everyone in the town offices and to the people of Windham. I wish them all the best.”