Nelson steps in as Perkins retires

By Avice Meehan

After serving as a quiet understudy to Linda Perkins, Norfolk’s long-time town clerk, Deborah Nelson officially stepped into the role on Oct. 8 when she was sworn in to succeed Perkins. It is yet another chapter in a life that has encompassed careers as a paralegal, homemaker and teacher.

Nelson is clearly someone who doesn’t like standing still—and that skill comes in handy in a town office where the unexpected rules the day.

“I don’t mind questions. I love welcoming new people to town and answering their questions,” Nelson said. In a 20-minute period, she was observed answering multiple phone calls; resolving a financial question with Barbara Gomez, who assists First Selectman Matt Riiska; providing an updated voter registration document to Dee Perron, the Democratic Registrar of Voters; and explaining the new stamp being used to document the receipt of absentee ballots.

Nelson credited Perkins, who resigned effective Oct. 1 after an extended leave, with teaching her how to set priorities and seamlessly move between issuing dog licenses and fielding phone calls about how to pronounce “Norfolk.”

“Linda has a great rapport with people. She can offer a shoulder to cry on or lend a helping hand,” Nelson said, describing her as “Mama Linda.”

But Perkins could also be the last in a long line of elected town clerks in Norfolk. She took office in 2010, succeeding Ann Moses, who held the role for 40 years. The position of town clerk was established in 1754 and predates the 1758 founding of the town itself, according to research conducted by Moses before her retirement.

Riiska believes the role should be appointed, rather than elected. He plans to bring the question before a town meeting, but a meeting date has not yet been set. A similar shift has already occurred with the position of town tax collector. “There’s a lot of state paperwork to these jobs, more than even six to 10 years ago,” he said. In the meantime, Nelson is filling out the remainder of Perkins’s unexpired term.

Nelson and her husband, Larry, met as students at Fairfield University and bought a house in Norfolk in 2018 after his retirement from the insurance industry. The opening in the town clerk’s office was something Nelson found by accident when she and her daughter were researching the White House at the Battell Stoeckel estate. That was three years ago. Nelson learned the ropes from Perkins and completed the rigorous but voluntary certification process for serving as a town clerk.

By its very nature, the town clerk’s office encompasses a range of responsibilities from the issuance of dog licenses and stickers for Tobey Pond to the recording of significant events in the life of a town: marriages, births, deaths and land transactions.

While working in her part-time role for the past three years, Nelson managed the postings of the agendas and minutes for town boards and committees while gaining an understanding of land records and vital statistics. That information, currently in the process of being digitized, is housed in a climate-controlled vault in Town Hall.

Perkins, a member of the board of the Norfolk Historical Society, is especially adept at combining her love of history and her familiarity with town records. “[W]hen we did our exhibition ‘Norfolk Women and the Vote’ in 2021, Linda knew exactly where to find the voter registration ledger in the town vault which lists the names of the 200 women who gathered at Town Hall on Sept. 18, 1920, and registered to vote,” said Ann Havemeyer, the society’s curator of collections. “This was the perfect resource for furthering our research for the exhibition.”

Like Perkins before her, Nelson appreciates Norfolk’s history and has the ability to move between the present and the past, although she admits that the volumes of tiny handwriting can be challenging to decipher, as are earmarks used to identify cattle for tax purposes. And though a relative newcomer, Nelson has her own Norfolk history—she learned how to swim as a 13-year-old while attending Camp Iwatka, a Girl Scout camp that’s now part of the Pine Mountain Preserve managed by the Norfolk Land Trust.