‘You’ve Got to Love Your Job:’ Chehalis City Employee Retires After 40 Years

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Chehalis Fire Department Administrative Assistant Barbara Lovelady, the longest-running city of Chehalis employee, is retiring after 40 years of work for the city.

On Thursday afternoon, Lovelady could be found in her office on the site of the temporary Chehalis Fire Station location between Walmart and Home Depot in Chehalis writing emails and filing some paperwork for local business inspections.

A lifelong Lewis County citizen, she was born in Morton, graduated from Mossyrock High School and resides in Mossyrock to this day. After high school, she attended college in Longview for business and then started her career in Chehalis. Lovelady started working for the city in 1980 in temporary positions at city hall but settled into her permanent role as the administrative assistant with the Chehalis Fire Department soon after.

She said that she has enjoyed working with the fire department because of the exciting nature of the job and being able to work with great fire chiefs throughout the years.

The secret to sticking with a job for 40 years is enjoying the job and feeling at home in the work environment, Lovelady said.

“You’ve got to love your job. You have to like the people you work with and I’ve got a great chief now,” she said. “I’ve had the greatest fire chiefs to work under.”

Lovelady said that she misses working out of the old fire station on Northwest Park Street, which is no longer being used because of the 100-year-old building’s structural instability and asbestos.

“On Dec. 10 it will be exactly 40 years and my last day is on Dec. 11. I’ll give them one more day,” she said with a laugh.



Lovelady has been responsible for working through the paperwork after some of the largest fires the small town has seen. She recalled the time her job brought her the exciting opportunity to climb Mount St. Helens. 

“I got to climb Mount St. Helens with the fire chief at the time. He had an extra ticket so I got to climb it with him and his family,” she said.

Recently, the fire department has been catching up on business inspections since many businesses have been closed due to the COVID-19 shutdown. Over 600 businesses in Chehalis must be inspected once a year to make sure the building is safe and free of fire hazards, Lovelady said, and she takes care of the paperwork for each one.

Although she is excited to retire she said: “Retiring is a little scary though because this has been my life.”

Lovelady is hoping to ease the transition from working life to retirement by visiting family and volunteering. 

Looking toward the future, Lovelady said she hopes to travel some to visit her daughter in Arizona when the COVID-19 pandemic has calmed down and possibly work as a teacher’s aid for her daughter who teaches special education. She has considered doing some volunteer work with the Lewis County Historical Museum, the food bank or Visiting Nurses. 

“The fire department is like a family — we’ve always been like a family,” she said.