It was in Duluth where former Gwinnett County Commissioner Shirley Lasseter rose from an educator to a $38,000-a-year City Hall staffer and later to the widely acknowledged leader of the city's recent renaissance.
Her 13-year tenure as mayor is remembered with affection and as a pivotal turning point for the city of 27,000. That made it difficult for longtime residents to reconcile news Thursday of Lasseter's guilty plea for her role in a bribery scheme with their memories of a woman still known locally as "Mayor Shirley."
"It’s hard for me to even fathom Shirley knowingly doing anything wrong," said Judy Wilson, a friend and president of the Duluth Historical Society.
Lasseter; her son John Fanning; and a third co-defendant, Hall County businessman Carl Cain, pleaded guilty to accepting bribes for her vote in favor of a zoning project they had been told was being purchased with proceeds from illegal drug sales.
Back in Duluth, many friends and acquaintances of Lasseter said there was never a hint of impropriety during her time as the town's top elected official.
"That's not her at all," said Aaron Bridgman, manager of the Park Cafe in downtown Duluth. "She always had the best interest of Duluth at heart. She's the one who jumpstarted the rise of Duluth."
Lasseter moved to Duluth in the late 1970s, when it was a town of about 3,000. There were no major thoroughfares then and the site of Gwinnett Place Mall was a trailer park.
By the time Lasseter left in 2007 for a seat on the Gwinnett Board of Commissioners, Duluth had increased its population nine-fold, built a new $13 million City Hall and laid the foundation for economic growth.
"She was truly a leader and it disappointed people when she (ran for the commission)," said Doris Kirouac, who served as a council member during most of Lasseter's stint as mayor.
The only known trouble Lasseter encountered before Tuesday was using her city-issued mobile phone to make personal phone calls. In a period of nine months in 1991, while working as Duluth's marketing director, the city spent $1,100 on her phone bills.
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Lasseter overcame those issues to defeat her former boss, incumbent mayor Bobby Williams, by 61 votes in the November 1993 election. She faced little opposition in subsequent elections.
But even as she rose to political prominence, friends say Lasseter dealt with personal struggles after the death of her husband in 2009 and her own health problems. She announced in February that she wouldn't seek reelection to her seat on the commission because of unspecified ailments. She resigned her seat in light of her Thursday guilty plea.
Lasseter's friend Jerry Robb said she called him a month ago after her car ran out of gas. The vehicle's gas gauge was not working and she was unable to afford the repairs, he said.
"She was having a hard time," Robb said. "But not many people knew that."
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