FAIRMONT – It would take Janice Cosco forever to get back to her pew after receiving communion at Immaculate Conception Church.
That’s because the former Marion County Clerk was friends with everyone there.
She never missed Mass at the stately Roman Catholic church tucked into a close-packed neighborhood on Fairmont’s East Side.
And she never missed an opportunity to acknowledge friends made in the ritualistic cycle of parish life.
Baptisms. Weddings. Confirmation. A welcoming dinner for the priest, newly arrived.
There was always a hand to clasp on that return trip after the Host.
And hugs that needed given, and kisses on the cheek that needed bestowing.
Cosco’s funeral Mass will be at 10 a.m. Saturday at the church.
She died earlier this week at the age of 85. A stroke she suffered months before bent her in a wheelchair and put her in a slow spiral of declining health.
Nearly 40 of her years were spent in the County Clerk’s office.
Cosco was elected in 1980. Thank Jimmy Carter for that.
Her resume, at that point, included factory work at Fairmont’s former Westinghouse plant and a stint at a travel agency in the Marion County city.
Working on the state campaign for the-then Georgia governor’s White House run four years earlier got her thinking about the possibilities for public life, also.
It was Cosco who got Kris Cinalli into local government.
He’s an East Sider who grew up in Immaculate Conception. Cosco was a friend of his parents.
“I owe everything to Janice,” said Cinalli, who is now the county’s chief administrator.
“She gave me my first job.”
And, a lasting lesson.
Cosco, he said, taught him how to treat people – taxpayers who call on the county clerk’s office, because, well, they need to.
“It’s that relationship between the public and the public servant,” he said.
“I always said that somebody might be mad when they walked into Janice’s office, but you knew they were gonna be smiling when they walked out. That was Janice.”
For sure, Julie Kincaid said.
Kincaid, the current county clerk, started out as one of Cosco’s “kids” – as she referred to the often young people going to work in her office.
That was 13 years ago for Kincaid.
“I had zero experience,” she said.
“I was looking for a career change. Janice had me working in every job in her department, so I could learn.”
More often than not, she said, echoing Cinalli, the best lessons were imparted by example.
The backdrop was the dichotomy of life in the county clerk’s office, where an employee may process a birth certificate – then a death certificate – in the span of a just a few minutes.
“We’ll see people in their happiest moments and the ones who are having their saddest moments,” Kincaid said.
“The key is treating everyone with the utmost respect, like they’re your family. Janice taught all of us that.”
It wasn’t always warm and cozy, though.
Cosco initially wasn’t a fan of electronic voting machines.
She didn’t much care for any Election Day wag who thought it was funny marking Donald Duck and Micky Mouse as write-in candidates, either.
In 1994, she and other administrators brought a lawsuit against the Marion County Commission.
The people who worked demanding jobs in their departments simply weren’t being paid enough to sustain their households, said suit alleged.
When the matter was eventually settled out of court, those workers emerged with a 5% pay raise.
“She was there for the people, just by being her,” Kincaid said.
“We’ve got some big, high-heeled shoes to fill, but that’s exactly what we’re going to keep doing in this office.”
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