30 Years Of Service To Britton: Marlow Retires

Marie Marlow was working at the Britton Journal just over 30 years ago when she saw a job opening for the Britton City Finance Officer come through the office. On a whim and without too much finance experience, she applied for the position. When she was offered the job, Marlow said it was hard to leave, but she would be on her way to start an adventure that would last three decades.

Marlow is a Britton native. Her parents owned the Dutch Maid Bakery in town. She explains that when she applied for the finance officer job she had taken a high school bookkeeping class and worked at an elevator as a bookkeeper for a while but was still surprised she got the job.

When she started the job in the early 90s, Kenny Stillson was the mayor. Since then, she has held the position under six other mayors. When asked to explain what a finance officer does, Marlow states that she handled the day-to-day operations of the city.

“Finance was just a portion of the job,” she said. Of course she handled the budget and wrote the checks, but she wore many other hats as well. “The job also involves working with water/sewer, streets, parks, the cemetery and being an HR and public relations person.”

Over the years, Marlow said the job has changed in challenging ways. “The accounting standards we have to follow change every single year.” She explained that when she started the job, the city report was about ten pages. Now it is around 35 pages.

She also says that it was challenging to help people realize that she works for the city council. “I didn’t make the rules or decisions. I just take the steps to make them official.” However, she laughs when she remembers how she once enacted a ‘resolution’ that the city council had to provide city hall employees cyclones from the Kree Mee on Fridays.

Mayor Clyde Fredrickson said he always appreciated Marlow for her work with the public. “Marie is the one who had to deal with the complaints,” he said. “Whether it might be a water bill or street issue, she sometimes had to give people answers that they did not want, and she was good at that, even though it was challenging.”

Over the years, Marlow served in leadership roles throughout the state thanks to her position. She was the president for both the State Finance Officer Association and the State Human Resources Association. She even wrote an instruction manual for South Dakota finance officers that she shared throughout the state.

For Marlow, some of the highlights of her tenure include her work on the cemetery. She has spent around 15 years working on getting the cemetery organized and documented. She has also been instrumental in planning the upcoming veterans memorial.

“There wasn’t a year we didn’t have some larger project going on,” said Marlow, whether it was street work, sewers or the new Events Center. She was especially proud of her efforts to help the Event Center become a reality. Her retirement part a couple of weeks ago was even held on the fourth anniversary of the center being opened to the public.

Fredrickson said he’s forever thankful for how Marlow helped both him and councils. “She has helped dozens of new council members learn their duties and what is required of them,” he said. “She has helped me and many other Mayors to understand this job and the sometimes strange or obscure regulations we must deal with. If I didn’t know the answer, I could ask Marie. She’d know it right away or find it.”

At the heart of it, Marlow has been satisfied with improvements she has seen in Britton throughout the last 30 years. But in the end, she thinks that Britton has remained the same in many ways, always retaining a friendly, small town feeling.

In fact, she says that her favorite part of the job is the people she has met and worked with along the way. “I love people and I loved visiting with everyone. I’m made so many friendships both in Britton and throughout the state thanks to this job.”

Even though she has had a good long run, Marlow knew that her thirty year mark would be a good time to retire. “The closer I got to thirty years, the more it felt right,” she said. “I knew it was time to move on to other things.” She is happy to have stayed on several months with the new finance officer Jennifer Athey to train her as well.

The mayor said he’s happy for Marlow as she moves on but sad to see her go. “Marie has been a pleasure to work with,” emphasized Fredrickson. “She was a great representative for the city.”

As she embraces the first week or two of so-called retirement, Marlow is doing anything but relaxing. She is already working part time as the deputy clerk of courts for Marshall County. She and her husband Russell are also the managers at the Marshall County Food Pantry. And she recently filled her plate even more by agreeing to be cochair of the Marshall County Chapter of the American Cancer Society with her sister Cyndy Grandpre.

Marlow also looks forward to spending time with her family. She has plenty of grandkids in activities throughout the state and enjoys traveling to watch them.

As she looks back on the last three decades, Marlow says she loved her time with the city. However, she is excited to start new adventures.

The Langford Area Music Boosters held their carnival this past weekend. Freshmen Tucker Hardy and Grace Hatfield were crowned Duke and Duchess. The winners are based on the number of raffle tickets sold per class. The freshmen class averaged 317 tickets sold per students. In all, the students sold over 18,600 tickets.