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Stantonsburg's clerk well-prepared for role
By Sarah A. Wise
NL Staff Writer
17 April 2008 — As Stantonsburg’s town clerk Victoria Lucas approaches her one-year anniversary with the town, she said that the job has not been quite as she predicted it.
Like many jobs, she said that once she got into the day-to-day work, she found that some things were a lot more challenging than she had thought they’d be.
However, she quickly points out that she feels that she was more than adequately prepared for the job by her predecessor.
You see, she had a somewhat unique opportunity to spend the first seven months on the job under the guidance of Diane Webb, who was preparing to retire from the town clerk position after working with the town for 23 years.
“I’m very thankful that I got to work with her through the process,” she said.
Victoria came to the town office on May 14 of last year, and worked side by side with Diane through the end of 2007. She began working with her on a daily basis, but as retirement approached, Diane cut back the number of days she was in the office, leaving Victoria in the lead.
And, at least in Victoria’s case, working with an expert has been a big benefit in becoming a part of citizen’s day-to-day interactions in town.
Stepping into the place of someone that citizens have grown so accustomed to could easily have been very hard. After all, when a town has grown accustomed to a certain way of doing town business over the course of two decades, it’s a little hard to make a quick shift.
But Victoria says that the time she spent working right beside Diane had prepared her to fill her shoes.
“I worked with her for so long, I was able to catch on to the way she did things,” Victoria said. “It makes it easier to take her place.”
Before she entered into full retirement, Diane said she had all confidence that Victoria would keep things in line for the town.
“She came in with a lot of working knowledge,” she said, “and I think the town will continue to be well-served by its clerk.”
After Diane officially retired at the beginning of the year and left Victoria in charge, the new clerk was faced with one of the occupational challenges that often crop up. The town board that she had worked with over the last seven months faced drastic changes the same month Victoria stepped up on her own, because two new councilmen were installed and a new mayor took the reins.
But she has taken it all in stride. She said that she’s getting to know the board, and she works well with the members most of the time.
Victoria isn’t quite a native of the town, but she grew up close enough to know how things are in a small town like Stantonsburg. She spent most of her life over the county line in Snow Hill, and graduated from Greene Central High School in 2001.
Before coming to Stantonsburg, Victoria worked for the Town of Farmville in the utility billing department. Her previous experience gave her knowledge of some of the basic programs Stantonsburg uses in their offices, which made the job an ideal fit. The biggest reason she was attracted to Stantonsburg, however, was the location.
“I decided to come to Stantonsburg because it’s closer to home,” she said.
Victoria and her family reside in the town. She and her husband Lance have two children, Chance, who is five, and two-year-old Connor. The Lucases are also expecting a third child this November.
Family is the priority for Victoria, and she said that much of her free time outside of the office is spent simply being with those closest to her. She also enjoys making scrapbooks of her family and friends, and she likes to read in her spare moments.
Though the arrival of the newest Lucas will keep Victoria out of the office for several weeks this winter, she has no doubts about whether or not she’ll come back to the office. She doesn’t know yet if she will follow in her predecessor’s footsteps and stay until retirement, but Victoria does see herself sticking around Stantonsburg for a while.
“I think this will be a long-time thing,” she said.
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