After listening to people praise him and thank him for 22 years service to the veterans of Laurens County, Carey Bolt did the Carey Bolt-iest thing you can imagine – he went around the room thanking everybody else.
Bolt’s staff organized a retirement drop-in Friday at the Veterans/Voting Office in Laurens, as the director of the Laurens County AND Greenwood County offices announces his retirement after 22 years on post. Bolt’s first career was in the Army starting in 1973 and retiring after 23 years, leaving the service as a sergeant. He says at that time he needed a job, so he worked as a Fountain Inn police officer and as a Fed Ex driver. Some of the speakers at the Friday retirement party remembered their first encounter with Bolt in that Fountain Inn role.
Former State Representative Mike Pitts, now a Laurens County Magistrate, nominated Bolt for appointment as the Veterans Affairs Officer, a move he said he has never regretted but he did have some interesting phone calls from county officials regarding Bolt’s – uh – insistence that things be done right by the veterans community of Laurens County…