By Jennifer Moody
Albany Democrat-Herald | Posted: Thursday, April 26, 2007 12:00 am
TANGENT - Office manager Bev Hovelsrud looked up Wednesday as fifth-grade teacher Linda Eng entered her office at Tangent Elementary School.
"Hi! Happy Secretary's Day!" Eng said, handing her a helium-filled balloon.
"Thank you!" Hovelsrud said with a smile.
Then her eyes widened as she saw the rest of Eng's students lined up behind her, also clutching balloons. And behind them, the kindergartners. And the first-second grade blend. And the third and fourth grades. And more first- and second-graders.
"Oh my gosh! Thank you! Thank you! Ahhhh! Oh, guys, how great!" Hovelsrud cried, beaming, as she accepted balloon after balloon from the winding line of children. "You guys - this is so sweet! Nobody said a word! Oh my gosh - more?"
According to the International Association of Administrative Professionals, Administrative Professionals Week - formerly known as Professional Secretaries Week - began in 1952 to recognize the contributions of office support staff in business and government and to encourage students to consider secretarial careers.
Administrative Professionals Week is always the last full week in April, and Administrative Professionals Day is the Wednesday of that week.
Kindergarten teacher Elisabeth Mowery organized the lighter-than-air celebration at Tangent following a memory Hovelsrud shared during Secretary's Day a year ago. The students at Oak Elementary School, she said, had filled her office with balloons once, and she'd never forgotten it.
Mowery took the idea to the school's parent club, which bought 200 balloons and borrowed a teacher's helium pump to fill them. They tied the balloons on the sly in a back room of the school, then handed them out to students at lunch while Hovelsrud was on break.
"It was wonderful," Vicki Meyer, treasurer of the parent-teacher club, said of the project. "You get all the kids to participate - it's a physical demonstration to show Bev how much she means to everybody in the school."
"She is an absolutely fabulous secretary," Mowery said. "You know, if filling this office with balloons will make her day, how easy is that?"