Pauline Jarrell tells her husband, Asheboro mayor David Jarrell, to keep her in the dark about city business.

That way, she said, if folks inquire what he thinks about this or that issue, or ask her to relay a message about one matter or another, she can say, quite honestly, that she knows nothing about it. Talk to the mayor yourself, she politely tells people.

One aspect of municipal business Mrs. Jarrell cannot escape is answering the many calls to their home from people who want to talk to Mr. Jarrell. But that’s OK with her. She’s been taking messages for much of their married life. Before they retired to his hometown (and her home county) in 1990, David Jarrell worked for years, many of them in managerial capacities, for Carolina Power and Light Co. across North and South Carolina.

She is accustomed to hearing callers grumble about electric service; now she fields calls from residents who want to complain about garbage service and such.

But she steers clear of city council meetings. She said she’s afraid her inclination to speak her mind could lead to trouble if she went.

“I would probably get mad if somebody said something ugly-sounding to him,” Jarrell said.

When someone asks what it’s like to be married to the mayor, she answers like a straight shooter who’s been married for 53 years.

“When I first met David,” she says, “he was reading meters with CP&L — and I can’t tell much difference.”

Jarrell grew up in Coleridge with six brothers and sisters, including a twin sister named Geraldine. (There’s a younger set of twins in the family, too, Ray and Faye.) Their father, Joe Albright, worked at the mill, carried mail and grew all the vegetables they ate; their mother, Bertha, made all their clothes. They had chickens and Jarrell recalls helping to milk the family’s three cows.
“We probably were poor,” said Jarrell, “but I didn’t know it.”

Jarrell remembers seeing her future husband for the first time when he was working as a soda jerk at Kearns Drug Store, across Salisbury Street from Bossong Hosiery Mill, where she was working.

They went on a double date after David Jarrell asked Donald “Pap” Callicutt, who was going out with Geraldine, to arrange a date for him with whichever twin he was not dating.

Two years later, in 1953, the two couples tied the knot in a double wedding ceremony at Concord Methodist Church in Coleridge. Callicutt had proposed to Geraldine much earlier, but she had been quick to tell him there would be no wedding until her sister Pauline had a mate, too.

Until their wedding day, Pauline and Geraldine, who were fraternal, not identical twins, dressed alike, taking turns deciding what they would wear to school each day. Before she wed, Pauline told people that marriage would be a breeze: The way she figured it, she had a lifetime of experience practicing give and take with another person.

One morning Geraldine balked, refusing to wear the yellow sweater and brown skirt Pauline had picked out. Geraldine wore a pink sweater instead. Their classmates did not know what to make of the shocking diversity.

Throughout their school days, Pauline and Geraldine were best friends with another set of twin sisters, Ada and Ida Moffitt. The four played together on the school basketball team — and even joined voices in The Twins Quartet, singing at funerals, reunions, homecomings and on the radio.

Pauline was salutatorian of her graduating class in 1949. Coming from such a large family, she did not get a chance to go to college. So, she got a job instead at the Asheboro hosiery mill where an uncle worked.

David and Pauline Jarrell wed while he was on a 30-day leave in the middle of a two-year stint with the U.S. Navy, stationed in Newfoundland. After the wedding, he went back to Canada and she moved in with her sister and new brother-in-law in an Asheboro apartment. When his military commitment ended, he returned to a job reading meters for CP&L in Asheboro.

She worked a couple of part-time jobs after Bossong, keeping books at a drug store and an oil company. For many years after their daughter, Karen, was born in 1956, she was a stay-at-home mom.

They lived in Asheboro until 1966, then successive assignments with CP&L sent the Jarrells to a variety of cities and towns over the next 25 years: first to Snow Hill in Greene County; then to the McColl/Bennettsville area of South Carolina; to Southern Pines back to North Carolina; to Wadesboro; and finally, to Roxboro.

A couple of the moves did not thrill Pauline Jarrell at the time. But she learned to adapt.

“I just decided, ‘I’m going to like it when we get there,’” she said, remembering one particularly traumatic move from a sophisticated urban setting to a small rural town.

She subscribes to a sentiment attributed to Abraham Lincoln that “you’re just about as happy as you decide to be.”

She discovered that people were not going to “knock your door down” to welcome newcomers. It is up to the newcomer who wants to develop a circle of friends to find a way to mingle, she said.

Moving from town to town, she got herself involved in new communities by joining garden clubs, hospital auxiliaries, through church and other such associations.

She worked in a both elementary, high school and community college libraries. She worked in the Clerk of Court’s office in both Greene and Anson counties. She was essentially the librarian in a South Carolina school, although she did not have the title. One school principal she worked for urged her to go to college and become a teacher. Few people are natural teachers, he told her. She was one of them, he added.

She said she does not understand people who say they are bored or unhappy in retirement.

“You can find all to do you want to do if you want to do it,” she said.

She loves to play bridge. She and her husband are in a bridge club for couples (she used to be a member of three bridge clubs in town). She also plays card games on her computer — bridge, spades, hearts.

She used to teach Sunday school full-time, but now just takes a class one Sunday a month. She’s president of the United Methodist Women at her church.

She visits nursing homes and people who live alone.

She loves to travel. She and her husband have traveled, among other places, across most of the United States, including Alaska, and have been to Israel, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. A trip she’d like to take one day is a driving tour of the West Coast from Washington into California.

Two or three times a week, the Jarrells can be found walking around town, carrying a bag to pick up trash they find along the way.

Moving back to Asheboro when her husband retired turned out to be one of the hardest moves they ever made. All of their closest friends had either died, divorced or moved away. Before too long, David Jarrell got involved in downtown revitalization efforts, then ran for — and was elected to — a seat on the city council. In 2005, he was elected to a second four-year term as mayor.

“I thought we were retiring,” Pauline Jarrell said. “I didn’t see all this coming. But, whatever makes him happy makes me happy.”

Before her daughter married, she offered the following advice: “You don’t ever need to get married until the person you’re marrying’s happiness is the most important thing in the world to you. Then you might be able to make a go of it.”

It’s a philosophy she believes in.

But the wisdom comes with a postscript.

“It really is the secret to a marriage,” she said, “but you both have got to feel that way.”

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