Kathy Sherman, the longtime Prattsville town clerk, has retired, looking forward to finally doing “as little as possible.”
By Michael Ryan
PRATTSVILLE - Let’s see, where to start with the story of Kathy Sherman who is retiring fully from public service in Prattsville?
Sherman’s tale doesn’t begin when she became town clerk in her adopted hometown, doing the job kindly and smoothly over 14 years.
She retired from that post, staying on as deputy clerk and secretary to the supervisor a couple of more years before making it final.
May 15 was her last official day, readying to relocate with her husband Everett to their new house in the town of Schoharie, nearer her son, Michael Hartzel, from an earlier marriage.
That first marriage might be a good starting point but it came to a end with an unpredictable sadness that was reminiscent of her childhood, so it will be more sensible to go back to Sherman’s origination.
Born a Huggins, she moved to Prattsville when she was 8 years old, into a little yellow house on the west end of Main Street, with her family, of course, including her father, a logger by trade.
An out of control tree, a widow-maker, changed life for little Kathy when she was 10, taking her dad, lumber-jacking in the woods of Halcott Mountain, leaving her mother holding the fort.
There were five kids to raise and history would repeat itself after Kathy graduated from Gilboa High and went to IBM school in Albany.
Intending on a business career, Sherman says she instead, “fell in love with a sailor,” Bob Hartzel, who after his seafaring days got into long haul trucking, another widow-maker as it turned out.
They were living in Arkansas when Bob died in a tractor-trailer accident, leaving 29-year-old Kathy with five kids of her own to raise up.
So it was back to the little yellow house on the west end of Prattsville where her brother, Alan, would one day become town supervisor.
Kathy worked at GNH Lumber in Windham for 10 years, eventually losing her marbles and getting talked into working for the government.
She didn’t really go nuts. “I have very much enjoyed serving the people of Prattsville,” says Sherman who, in her quieter moments, has made a popular niche for herself in pocketbook making (and selling).
The hobby has evolved into Kate’s Kreations, crafting all sorts of handbags and wallets that a local vendor calls “truly unparalleled.”
Betwixt and between all that, Kathy crossed romantic paths with Everett, one of the town of Windham, hamlet-of-Hensonville, Shermans.
“I always loved to drive fast. I still do,” Kathy says, laughing. “I used to have a Mustang. I don’t remember how I got it but I was driving fast somewhere and hit a big bump in the road.
“When the car came back down, something was wrong. This fellow I knew had a gas station in Windham so I drove it there to see what happened.
“The front spring was broken. Everett was working there and volunteered to fix it - don’t ask me why - and love bloomed,” Kathy says.
Together, they will soon be letting the dust settle at their new digs, a bittersweet - mostly sweet - resettling.
“It isn’t that we want to get out of Prattsville,” Kathy says. “We just decided it’s time to have a smaller place, and Michael wants us next door.”
The current plan, she says, is to do, “as little as possible,” although that could include some traveling, maybe to Maine for lobster and shrimp.
Will she be fishing? “Heck no. I’m gonna buy it,” Kathy says, perhaps pausing for sudden picnics in sunny weather along the way.
“When I was growing up, I had an uncle who used to come and take my mom and us kids to visit our grandparents,” Sherman says.
That would be the same uncle who spent parts of his childhood in a foster home, as did his brother, Kathy’s father, one of 11 siblings.
“My mom would make a big picnic lunch,” Kathy says. “We would ride the roads until we found a good spot,” which with Everett can be anywhere.
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