By Burton Cole
FALMOUTH — His friends and co-workers painted Gary Lea as a stubborn man given to arguments — and as one of the most dependable guys they know.
Lea, 61, retired last week as director of public works for the City of Falmouth.
Former Mayor April DeFalco recalled times when she’d task Lea with a project. “He’d say, ‘I don’t know if that’s going to work, April.’”
Yet, jobs got done and emergency calls were answered. Always.
“The birthdays, the holidays Gary had to leave,” DeFalco said. “I recalled one night he had to come out on his anniversary.”
In his 44 years of service, Lea has dealt with backed-up sewers, power outages, ice storms and the disastrous flood of 1997.
He and his crew also have taken care of things such as installing new light poles on the U.S. Highway 27 bridge on the north side of town, hanging banners honoring military veterans and erecting city Christmas trees.
“It’s going to be a big loss for the city,” Pendleton County Fiscal Court Magistrate Rick Mineer said Sunday afternoon at Lea’s retirement party, held in the Kentucky Farm Bureau building in downtown Falmouth.
“It’d be snow, rain or sleet, and then there’d be Gary up in a bucket fixing an electric line or something,” he said.
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