Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Garfield City Clerk Annie Pillers will be leaving her position on Halloween.
After six years serving the town at city hall, she will become the Executive Director for Friends of Hospice, a non-profit group serving Whitman County.
Since 2008, she has been the face and voice of city hall for people coming in to pay water bills, get building permits and more.
“It’s amazing in five minutes a month how deeply you get to know someone,” said Pillers.
Aside from her job as city clerk, Pillers has been an EMT, Deputy Coroner and hospice volunteer in Garfield.
“I am deeply entwined with the Garfield community and feel very blessed by that,” she said.
Pillers was born in Ireland and adopted from an orphanage at age three by a couple from Sacramento, Calif. She grew up there and met Washington native Marv Pillers when he came into a newspaper office where she worked.
They were married and moved to Palouse in 1990.
Before working in Garfield, Pillers served as city clerk in Palouse in the ‘90s and with the Palouse Chamber of Commerce and other organizations. She became an EMT in 1999.
“When you start as an EMT your purpose is to save lives but what we find is that we deal with a lot of death too. The whole continuum of life is what you really find out when you become an EMT.”
She has facilitated the grief support groups for Friends of Hospice since 2009 and was the Bereavement Coordinator with Whitman Home Health and Hospice before that.
Pillers’ new position with Friends of Hospice is based at the Gladdish Community Center in Pullman.
For the past month, Pillers has been helping to train her replacement, Cody Lord, originally from the Methow Valley. A former WSU student, he has a background in business management, including restaurants, general contracting, retail and transportation brokerage.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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