Chagnon retires after three decades in Havre schools

Havre High School Activities Secretary Ginger Chagnon is retiring after 18 years at the high school and 28 years years in the district.

When she first started out in the district in 1992, she said, she was the secretary to the curriculum director in the Robins Administration Building for three years.

After that, she transferred to Havre Middle School, where she was the secretary to the principal for seven years, she said.

She said when her son, Gray, was a freshman in high school the activities secretary position opened up and she moved there.

"My job was fun," Changon said. "It was busy, working the ball games, watching the kids achieve their goals and working with the co-workers."

She said she can remember working the football games with her co-workers while it was snowing outside and they were trying to get the cars in and such.

Working the games was the funnest part of her job, she said, adding that it was a lot of work to get ready for them.

She said some of her favorite memories include working with her co-workers, students coming to eat lunch with her, cheering the students on at a ball game and more.

"I can think of one in a million things, but not something that's more than the other," she added.

Originally, she said, she was from Lillington, North Carolina.

She was the last graduating class of Lillington High School in 1977, then the consolidated schools came in, she said.

She said that when she was in high school she was an office aide.

"I can remember when the school secretary was gone the principal would come on over the intercom in my English class and telling Mrs. Jackson to send me to the office and I would go down, and I would type the student absentee list," Chagnon said. "I won the business award when I was in high school, so I guess looking back, it started even then in high school."

She never had any formal training over the years, she said, but she has learned over the years on how to do things.

She said she came to Montana in 1980, and worked as a secretary and later a paralegal at the Hauge, Ober, Thompson and Goldstein law firm that later merged with another law firm and became Morrison, Hauge, Young, Melcher and Brown.

She has been married to her husband, Wayne, for 38 years with three children Jessica, Ryan and Gray.

Her plans for retirement include spending more time with her husband, she said.

"My husband and I love being together," Chagnon said. "...  He will be retiring from the postal service here in a few months, so we have plans already for a trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina."

She has family in North Carolina, Florida, Oregon, Texas, Minnesota and Oregon, she said, and all those trips are on her and her husband's bucket list with a few more.

She added that they love to camp, spending time with their children, and they have six grandchildren.

"We'll still come to ball games and I'll still cheer the Blue Ponies on. I just won't be working," she said.

Her boss, Dennis Murphy, she said, took the activities director position one year before she started in that office.

"He was an awesome boss," she said. "He was very easy to work for. He just kind of let me have at it and it just all kind of came together, and I think we made a great team. I think we did a great job for Havre Public Schools."