Adieu, Madame Clerk

City Council President Annie McWilliams called it the end of an era.

Councilman Adrian Mapp said, “She’s an institution.”

Councilwoman Linda Carter praised her for “a mastery of words that no one will ever be able to come close to.”

The occasion was City Clerk Laddie Wyatt’s last council meeting after 23 years on the job. Before that, she had been with the Board of Education for 16 years, giving Plainfield nearly 40 years of service.

Within those years, she served at the side of two of the city’s most charismatic leaders, Everett C. Lattimore and Richard L. “Rick” Taylor. Lattimore was the city’s first black mayor and the first Democrat to hold the post in 68 years. Besides that, he had been a councilman for 10 years, a freeholder for three terms and an educator who rose to the rank of schools superintendent. Taylor, a decorated Vietnam veteran and city councilman, became mayor when Lattimore was forced to decide between that part-time post and his fulltime educational calling. As mayor and also executive director of Grant Avenue Community Center, Taylor had a penchant for bringing big-name black politicians and entertainers to Plainfield, stirring up pride as well as excitement.

Wyatt and her husband Leonard, now deceased, moved to Plainfield in 1964 and gradually became acquainted with both men. She recalls that her husband ran against Lattimore for freeholder. She met Lattimore when he was principal at Hubbard Middle School and remembers him prodding her ambition, asking “What do you want to do?” She said she wanted a job “making a lot of money,” which at the time she set as $10,000.

She saw him rise through the ranks to assistant superintendent while she became the union chairperson for grievances, she said. Her gift for writing up the grievances won congratulations from then-superintendent Dr. Ron Lewis and attracted enough interest from Lattimore that he was soon asking her to “come work for me.”

Meanwhile, she recalls, Rick Taylor was calling from City Hall, but she chose to stay with Lattimore and became his executive secretary, finding the sphere of education more appealing than municipal government.

Taylor, however, did not relent and in 1987 she was appointed acting city clerk as longtime City Clerk Emilia Stahura was retiring.

“I came in as an innocent,” she said, claiming never to have followed politics. But even after she became aware of the political arena and the fierce competition among rivals for leadership, she strove to be diplomatic and above the fray - despite her increasing insight into party politics.

“As clerk, you hear everything,” she said. “You know where all the skeletons are.”

For whatever reason, Wyatt was only a couple years into the job when she found herself targeted for dismissal. By then, she was immersed in what she calls “clerkdom,” a society priding itself on knowing the law and upholding the rectitude of municipal government through constant learning and accreditation.

None other than Michael Pane, the attorney who headed the Municipal Clerks’ Association of New Jersey, took up her case and she prevailed in what was heralded in the group’s journal, “The Quill,” as a landmark decision for clerks. Wyatt kept her job and received $19,000 from the city for her defense. She went on to receive tenure in the post, which she says she celebrated by buying herself a fur jacket embroidered with the words, “Tenure is the best revenge.”

Since then, she has earned the right to add three honorifics to her name, denoting Registered Municipal Clerk, Certified Municipal Clerk and Master Municipal Clerk Academy attainment. She is addressed as Madame Clerk at council meetings.

The heady days of breakthroughs for black politicians have subsided somewhat. Headline-grabber Rick Taylor was followed in office by four other black mayors of varying personal styles. The governing body has been mostly black Democrats for decades, though not without factions.

“There has always been a fight between the mayor and council throughout my tenure,” she said.

But Wyatt said she has done her best to be neutral and fair to all.

North Plainfield Clerk Richard Phoenix was a witness to much of Wyatt’s career, first at the Board of Education and then at Plainfield City Hall.

In the school district, he said, “Everybody loved her.”

She was known to students and staff alike over the years, Phoenix said. After funding for his job as public information officer dried up and Wyatt needed someone to help with minutes, Phoenix stepped in as transcriber. Later he served as her assistant at meetings, called on not only to keep the sound system in order but also to read proclamations in his mellifluous “radio voice.”

“She was very big on ceremony and dignity and respect,” he said.

While still keeping up his career in radio, Phoenix learned enough about being a clerk to become the deputy to North Plainfield Clerk Gloria Pflueger and to succeed her upon her retirement. He credits Wyatt, saying, “She has always been a very strong mentor to me.”

In recent budget talks, Wyatt offered a page-long list of the clerk’s duties, including not only being the keeper of records and secretary to the governing body but overseeing elections and dealing with three dozen liquor licenses each year. These days, she gets 23 memos a day from the state on various matters and must constantly keep abreast of changes in election law, she says.

Those who know her well have heard her speak of retirement for many years, but until now it has been only a notion. Now she will officially be out of office at the end of the year. As Mapp said when Wyatt shed some tears Monday, “I know she’s emotional – she really doesn‘t want to go.”

Echoing her own devotion to the post, Wyatt said her advice to whoever succeeds her is, “If you are not going to be dedicated and married to the job, you’re not going to be successful in your job.”

McWilliams said she will always be remembered as an “advisor and friend to many,” adding, “Mrs. Wyatt, we can never thank you enough.”

(And best wishes to Madame Clerk from Ms. B!)

--Bernice Paglia