Editor?s Note: This is the first in a series of stories profiling influential Carroll women in honor of March being National Women?s History Month. Read Tuesday?s Examiner for a story on Commissioner Julia Gouge, the second longest-serving commissioner in county history.
Suzanne Albert doesn?t sweat the small stuff.
She learned petty problems don?t matter one day in 1974, when a possessive boyfriend murdered her 19-year-old daughter Rebecca.
“Whining just makesyou sound small,” said Albert, a senior member of Westminster Common Council.
Her front yard displays her signature navy campaign sign for re-election to a fourth term ? apparently the first signs erected in the city for May?s council race.
The terms for Council Members Robert Wack and Gregory Pecoraro also expire this year, according to the city?s Web site.
Residents have blasted Albert as too quiet during council meetings.
“I?ve been criticized for not being dynamic enough,” she said during lunch Thursday at O?Lordan?s Irish Pub. “But I think making comments just to make comments is frivolous. It?s decisive action; that?s how I contribute. [In public], I take a professional and serious stance. It?s ladylike, demure. I?m carefully listening.”
In 1995, Albert became the second woman on city council after Rebekah Orenstein.
Today, Albert, a wife for 53 years to Charles, a retired chemist, and a grandmother of five, can rattle off a list of accomplishments, including saving the bell in the clock tower of old city hall and rehabilitating the corner of Liberty and Green streets for businesses and a parking garage.
And, she said, she can?t wait to do more to help the city find more water and attract new businesses.
Her calling to public service could come from her grandfather David Walsh, a former Westminster mayor from 1912 to 1914, or her 32 years as a registered nurse and administrator in the public health bureau for the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Either way, she said, she isn?t done yet.
