1/4/07

Drayton dynamo retires after 34 years
By Brian Jarvis

BRIAN JARVIS/Manning Times
Cindy Drayton (second from right) gathers with her co-workers one last time at the county auditor’s office. Also pictured: Sonya Mellerson, Patricia Pringle and Thomasena Ragin.

Most residents look forward to seeing their county auditor with about as much enthusiasm as they have for their local dentist, but for years Cindy Drayton has made their visits a bit brighter with her quirky personality and good-natured spunk.

Which, naturally, makes it all the more painful that Friday marked her last day. After more than three decades of stellar customer service, Drayton is hanging up her name-card.

“It’s been a pleasure to work for Clarendon County. I’ve been good to them and they’ve been good to me,” Drayton said. “I’ll miss the people I work with and my customers. You just really get to meet a lot of people in 34 years.”

“Ever since I came to this office, she’s been a joy,” said county auditor Patricia Pringle. “Cindy’s been my mentor, my friend and just a pleasure to work with. She gets here forty-five minutes early, and by the time the rest of us get to work she has coffee on and ready. Sometimes you almost have to force her to take a vacation.

“Because she’s been here so long, she’s very knowledgeable and has her own unique way of handling customers,” Pringle added. “She can do it with a smile even when they’re difficult to deal with. She’s the type that any employer would want to have working for them.”

A lifelong resident of Manning, Drayton graduated from Anderson College with a degree in business and took on her first county job in 1972 with the Board of Commissioners, then the forerunner to Clarendon County Council.

“That was back when there were no computers. Instead, there were five sheets of carbon that made five copies of everything,” Drayton recalled. “When we got good carbon, that was an exciting day.”

After working stints under both the county treasurer and county supervisor, Drayton settled into her current role as deputy auditor where she helps customers figure out their tax bills and financial statements, a job she has come to love despite the ever-changing rules brought on by legislation.

“Year to year you think you know it, but then something changes and you don’t know it,” she said. “But we all work very well together. I supervise the girls here.”

As if on cue, Drayton curiously turns to a co-worker. “Do I supervise you?”

“You do everything. You keep us afloat,” assured tax clerk Thomasena Ragin, who joined the office in April. “I don’t want you to leave; you can put that in big quotes. We’re smiling on the outside, but we’re crying and praying on the inside. It’s been a fabulous eight months.”

Her first day of retirement, Drayton said, will be spent sleeping until eight a.m. instead of six. Near the end of January she’ll head to Florida to see her grandson, who attends the Citadel, compete in a track meet; in May she’ll set sail on a Jamaican cruise with her daughter’s family.

“And I’ll start working in the yard. I just want to have a pretty yard,” Drayton said. “I’ve worked 34 years and that’s long enough.”