MANCHESTER – Sheila Loftus, Cathleen O’Brien and Pat Beaudin are sisters, and they’ve always tended to do things together. They went to school together, had kids around the same time, and even ended up working together at the Manchester School District. Now, they’re all retiring together, too.
Sheila, an accountant for School Food and Nutrition Services, Cathleen, a paraprofessional at Jewett Street School, and Pat, a lunch lady at Jewett, have worked for the District for a combined 79 years. While the sisters have always been well-aligned, none of it was necessarily planned.
“I feel it was almost a coincidence,” Cathleen said of the coordinated retirement. “They knew I was going to retire at 65, and Pat kept talking about it, and I’m like ‘you can’t retire before me because you’re not 65 yet.’”
“I was the wildcard, because they didn’t expect me to,” Sheila said. “I’d always said that if I can, I’m going to retire at 62 and I turned 62 in May. I knew they were retiring and I thought, you know what, that sounds like a fun thing to do.”
Cathleen started in the district first, 30 years ago. Sheila started 25 years ago and Pat joined 24 years ago.
“I started back in 2000 when my youngest daughter went to first grade,” Pat said. “It was ideal – I had snow days off with my kids and summer break, too.”
The sisters attended city schools, including Jewett Street. Coming back to work there wasn’t something they’d imagined as kids, but they did – and a lot of family have ended up working in city schools at one point or another, too.
“We’ve had a bunch of cousins that have worked here - teachers, paraprofessionals - it’s kind of been the family gig,” Sheila said.
Cathleen’s husband, Dave, even ended up working as a driver for the district for several years after his retirement.
“It was by happenstance,” Cathleen said. “Sheila would say, you know we can’t get anybody for this, does he want to work part time? He was doing something else at the time but that’s how it came to be.”
When classes end in a few weeks, it will be the first time in 30 years that none of the trio will be working in a city school. They said they’ll miss the people the most.
“It’s the relationships that I’ve made,” Sheila said. “I hire all the lunch ladies, and hear their stories. You get to know them on a personal level and that’s been really fun.”
Pat said she’d build a lot of lasting friendships, and she was thankful for the support of the administration at Jewett.
“The administration here is wonderful,” she said. “They help us out whenever we need it and it’s terrific.”
Manchester School District will celebrate all of its retirees at the June 10 Board of School Committee meeting.