Mrs. Peggy Rice has been greeting visitors to Linganore for 18 years and is retiring this year. As a send-off, the staff has been giving her something a bit peculiar, keys. For years, one aspect of Rice’s job has been organizing, issuing, collecting, and maintaining the keys for the staff.

She said, “When I first came here, people had keys in little boxes that weren’t organized at all, so I tried to get them organized and make a system.” As an homage to her years of sorting keys for the staff, they are now giving her their old keys which they are adding to a jar on her desk. Some even have notes of appreciation attached to them. You can imagine her surprise when she came into work to find a jar of keys on her desk and none of them were school related.

She says her favorite thing about her job is, “I love meeting the people, the visitors, the different parents. Everyone has a different smile and outlook, some happy, some are sad, but they’re always happy when they leave, so I think that our staff has taken care of their problems.”

After she retires, she plans to just spend more time at home and with her family and grandchildren, and work on projects around the house, like gardening and planting flowers.

Principal David Kehne said, “Mrs. Rice has been a warm and welcoming face for all who visit Linganore!  We’ll miss her but wish her all the best in her retirement.”

“I’m happy and I’m sad,” she said.  What she’ll miss most is “contact where someone needs you and you try to help them. It makes you feel good at the end of the day when you know you’ve helped someone.”