Lynn and Joell Archibald. Joell will be retiring from the Oregon Health Authority where she has worked the last nine years as an innovator agent.

Forty-five years. That’s an awfully long time for anything. Longer than 16,000 days and more than 390,000 hours. Longer than Tom Brady’s life and 270 times longer than his most recent retirement. Longer than this author has been alive.

On April 1, Joell England Archibald will be retiring from a 45-year career as a dedicated health care professional that served in numerous roles and communities.

Joell is my mom, and not just any mom, but the type of mom that mastered all the responsibilities of raising six kids while being a working professional with many job requirements and daily challenges.

Joell will be retiring from the Oregon Health Authority where she has worked the last nine years as an innovator agent. Her role was dynamic, involving communities across the northwest portion of the state and, as you can imagine, looks significantly different after the last two years of dealing with COVID.

There were days where she would have meetings in Yamhill, Tillamook and Clatsop Counties and this was before the shifting of things to an online setting. Joell has developed in-depth relationships with those communities she served and gone to great lengths to elevate the public health voice and initiatives needed to improve the lives of those communities.

But the last decade only begins to tell the story of a lifetime of service in a healthcare setting. Joell worked in Lincoln, Clatsop and Wahkiakum (across the river) Counties as the Director of Health and Human Services and prior to that, in public health positions for Clatsop County and Columbia Memorial Hospital.

Before our family moved here, we lived in Puyallup, Washington, and some of my memories from that part of life were accompanying mom during the fulfillment of her career; she owned and operated a small business start up called “The Warming Touch” focused on providing in-home perinatal nursing services, specifically to babies suffering from jaundice shortly after birth.

How comforting it was years later when one of my own children was born with jaundice to have the expertise of Joell to guide us through that process.

Even before that, Joell served our country and bettered her career through enrollment as an active-duty US Army Nurse and a reserve officer. Shortly after she married my father (who retired in 2021), they were shipped around the country from Washington, D.C., to San Antonio and finishing up at Fort Lewis in Washington state.

Somehow during that time, she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing and a Master of Business Administration degree, with the timing coinciding with what was surely the most challenging part of her professional career and personal life, six children born in the span of 10 years including a set of twins and an ornery and picky eating fourth child (this author).

Your presumption that her 45-year career has been one defined by movement, direction and purpose would be precisely accurate.

However impressive as that professional resume is, it’s impossible, for me at least to note any of her career accomplishments before her impact on me as my mother.

Mom never missed anything that was significant to me: athletic contests, choir concerts, plays, speeches. And that goes for my siblings too. She also never missed opportunities to ensure that I was on the right path and believe me, I gave plenty of opportunities for corrective feedback.

Somehow, we ate dinner together as a family every night it seemed. The clothes and house were always clean, lunch was made or provided and I was always where I needed to be after school, thanks to her and the juggling of an average of 14 trips daily to and from various gyms, fields and schools.

She continues to be a presence in my life and in the life of her 16 grandchildren.

It sounds hyperbolic and cliché to say, but she was (and still is) a superwoman!

April 1 may mark the end of her professional career but I anticipate that her next endeavors will continue to be themed by a clear motive and purpose.

Her impact stretches far beyond my family as I know she’ll be missed in those communities that she served. I’m hopeful that she’ll find as much value in her future endeavors — volunteerism, service, grandma duties and just relaxing — as she did in her professional career.