Marilyn Sauls has accomplished a lot in life and has traveled extensively. The former tax official still does what she can and travels a bit, despite suffering from a disease that has taken her eyesight from her.
Sauls, 89, and a widow for less than a year, lives alone now — with the help of a caregiver — on the outskirts of Gray. She acknowledged she suffers from macular degeneration and is basically blind, but she said in an interview this past Saturday she hopes to move into smaller living quarters soon.
“It’s what was Stone Brook, the assisted living facility that my niece, Sherri (Rollins), has converted into small apartments and efficiencies,” she explained.
“I think it will be easy because it’s really hard to have a house to know where everything is when I can’t see.”
Her daughter, Melinda Bivins, explained that the disease started when Sauls was in her 60s and progressed to the point it is now. Her mother’s condition significantly worsened in the past two years, Bivins said in a phone conversation.
On top of that, Sauls and her husband of nearly 69 years, Clark, were in a serious automobile collision four years ago, affecting her posture. Clark never completely recovered from the accident and died last year from complications that developed following surgery for other reasons.
Sauls has lived in Jones County all her life and is the daughter of the late Milton and Lizzie Greene.
“I was born in the house up here on the highway. Mother said that’s when Highway 11 was finished and being poured,” Sauls shared. “Unless they had problems — they would go to Macon Hospital then — most everybody was born back then by the country doctor, Dr. Zachary.”
Sauls graduated from Jones County High and continued her education in Macon, but she ended up on the job and in charge sooner than expected.
“I was in school at Georgia- Alabama Business School,” she recalled. “They called it GAB. I learned a lot I never had gotten in high school. It really surprised me how much I did learn.”
“It was a two-year program, and they would give you a job, part time,” Sauls said, “and I worked for the main contractor of the Macon Hospital. Boy, did I learn a lot there,” she added with a laugh.
“The comptroller I was under, all of a sudden quit, and they handed that to me. I was so afraid. Here I am, 22-23 years old. I learned some things about big construction I would never have learned otherwise.
“But then I didn’t stay at that job for that long,” she recounted, “because then I got engaged to be married.”
Clark Sauls was from ‘south Macon,’ his future wife said. They met at the skating rink that once stood on Eatonton Highway just outside Gray.
“He worked there part-time with his best friend, Mickey,” Sauls said. “They also had dancing there on the weekends,” she added, “but Clark would never let me go there,” she laughed.
They dated for close to two years before marrying in 1955.
Clark Sauls went to work at Warner Robins in civil service, and his wife decided she needed a job. She accepted the offer of her aunt, Jones County Tax Receiver Fannie Glawson, to work with her part-time.
Sauls said it didn’t take too long for the situation to change.
“She was getting elderly. One day I was going in to help her. I get to the office, and she had quit. I said, ‘she quit; my gosh, what are we going to do?’ They came to me and said they wanted me to run.”
Sauls had decided she would do that, but she was concerned with, in her words, how dirty politics can be.
“I told my preacher that, and he said, ‘Marilyn, how in the world can politics ever get better if good people don’t run?’ That made so much sense to me, and I took it almost as a calling to run.”
Sauls was the top vote-getter in a field of five women and won the first of her 10 elections, serving until 1996, when she retired.
The incumbent faced opposition only a couple of times. A former county commissioner ran when the positions of Tax Receiver and Tax Collector were combined into Tax Commissioner in 1984. She won that election handily and said by then she felt she had learned the job.
“I felt almost like a lawyer,” she confided with a smile. “When I went there at 22-23 years old, I didn’t know anything as far as the laws and all that.”
She added that the late Gray attorney Pierce Anderson helped her immensely.
“He told me where to look for the law, things like that. He said, ‘don’t you ever do anything unless it’s written down.’ He was so good to me.”
Sauls recalled one opponent who ended up qualifying for Tax Receiver almost by accident.
“She was going to run for Tax Collector, but when she got up there to pay her money to run, she didn’t have the money to run for Tax Collector, so she said she would just run for Tax Receiver.”
Sauls won that election with no problem as well. She said the work obviously changed with the advent of computers and other technology, but in the early days, everything was handwritten, and the annual schedule and lack of staff made it tough.
“We had so many deadlines, and we didn’t hardly have any help,” she lamented. “Because the county commissioners would usually say, ‘we’ll give you 25 cents above minimum wage for all your help,’ and that’s all we nearly ever got. So,” she added, “it was hard to get help. It really was.”
Sauls witnessed growth in the county as well as in her office, including the move to the current Government Center on Highway 11 that the county purchased when Jonesco Academy closed. She credited county commissioner (the late) Corbin Roberts with his help during that renovation.
“He was up there about every day, saying ‘we need to do this’ or ‘this should go there.’ There was a good bit of design to be done for the new office space.”
Once she decided to call it quits in 1996, Sauls and Clark did some traveling. Some of those trips were part of his job. When he took the early retirement from his civil service job, Clark Sauls went to work with the Air National Guard. Both jobs required him to travel.
“He would be on TDY (temporary duty) a lot, and when I could take a long weekend, I would go with him,” she said. “It was real interesting to see the United States that way.” Sauls shared, though, that in the last couple of years of the civil service job, her husband’s role took on a different look when he was at one of the nuclear plants in the Midwest. His job required a lot of secrecy.
“He said, ‘these people that guarded us, they went to the bathroom with us. They stood right by us to make sure we didn’t do anything. ’” Part of Clark Sauls’ traveling was due to a change in philosophy, according to Sauls. She explained that he did electronic and computer work on airplanes.
“He said, ‘Marilyn, they used to send the planes to Warner Robins for us to work on. Then, they sent us to work on the planes wherever they were.”
Sauls said they visited many countries after retirement, including Australia, South American locales, Eastern Europe, Great Britan and that area, Finland, Alaska and New Zealand.
“We never made it to Antarctica,” she said. “We almost made it there, but not quite. But,” she added, “New Zealand is the most beautiful place we went to. It really is, and I thought Alaska would be. But, New Zealand is even more beautiful.”
The Sauls traveled a lot of time with his co-worker and friend Joe Smith and his wife, Imelda, as well as Jones Countians Kenneth and Vicki Cobb, Al and Janelle Bridges, and Pete and Judy Norris, among others.
Sauls said an enjoyable part of her retirement has been spending time with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Melinda and Jay Bivins have two children, as do son Howell and his wife, Theree. Between them, they have given Sauls five great-grandchildren.
“I love my ‘kids,’” Sauls smiled, “and I really enjoy my time with them.”
Sauls and the Bivins own condos in Panama City Beach, and she enjoys being there. Caregiver Beryl Thomas is part of that trip.
“Beryl will take me to Panama City. I still love to go down there,” she commented, and her daughter confirmed that.
“Beryl’s like mama’s best friend,” Bivins said with a chuckle. “She’s ready to go to the condo anytime, and if I can’t go, she just takes mama right on down there. It’s nothing for them to just take off.”
Following the discussion about her family, Sauls sat for a moment, then reflected on her life, both personally and as a public official.
“I try to do everything I can,” she declared, “and what I can’t, Beryl helps me. I just love Beryl.”
Sauls paused before mentioning her nearly 40 years in office.
“I hope I set an example,” she said. “I’ll never regret it. I made so many friends. I just loved it.”
