ORANGE — Licenses, certificates and notifications coming out of Town Hall will no longer bear the name Nancy M. Blackmer, as the longtime public servant retired as town clerk on June 30.

“In three hours I’ll be out of here,” she said with a laugh shortly after 1 p.m. Monday. “I hope to just retire. We’ll see when the checks stop coming in if I have to find something else. I’m hoping to just retire and not have to work again.”

Blackmer has gotten well-wishes from residents who stopped in recently and she received rounds of applause at each of the three nights needed for Annual Town Meeting last month. The final ballot election she oversaw was the unsuccessful Proposition 2½ override vote on June 23.

Then-Town Clerk Shirley Page appointed Blackmer as assistant town clerk in 1999 and she became the full-time clerk in January 2000. Blackmer grew up in Whately, where her mother worked as town clerk out of her home for about 40 years, and moved to Orange when she got married in 1977. She worked as a classroom aide at Fisher Hill Elementary School before joining the Town Clerk’s Office, a job she said has become much more computerized over the past 26 years.

“When I started, the only computer in the office was the state computer, so all we had a computer for was voter information stuff,” Blackmer recalled. “I had to fight for several years before I could get a computer.”

Blackmer has been town clerk for the entirety of Selectboard Chair Tom Smith’s two stints on the board. In a statement, Smith thanked Blackmer for her 25 years as town clerk and 30 years as a town employee, and wished her well in retirement.

Rachael Fortier, who Blackmer appointed as assistant town clerk in 2021, took over as interim town clerk on Tuesday and can run for the position on the ballot in March. She said Town Hall won’t be the same without Blackmer.

“It still feels kind of unreal, but we did have a lot of stuff going on the last couple of weeks,” Fortier said on Monday. “Tomorrow when I get here it’s going to be a lot weirder when she’s not here. ... Another person’s coming in to play the ‘me’ role — then I’ll be like, ‘OK, this is real.’”

The assistant town clerk role has been filled by Diane Page.

Thinking back over her tenure, Blackmer noted election laws have changed “drastically,” adding to the responsibilities of the Town Clerk’s Office.

“Before, there was absentee voting and you voted in person at the polls, and that was it,” she said. “And now we have absentee voting, you’ve got vote by mail, you’ve got in-person early voting and you’ve got voting at the polls. Early voting and vote by mail have buried the clerks during the voting season.”

Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-930-4120.