SALISBURY — Dale Knowles lost her hometown's vote to be its representative on the Triton Regional School Committee but beat her opponent Linda Litcofsky by more than 100 votes when the results came in from Rowley and Newbury.
It was Newbury voters who overwhelmingly put Knowles over the top, picking the wheelchair-bound brain cancer survivor over Litcofsky 492 to 303. The total of all three towns gave Knowles the lead 873 to Litcofsky's 767.
"Oh my God! I'm amazed," Knowles said when told of her victory last night. "I'd like to thank all those who voted for me and all those who signed my nomination papers."
"We're both stunned but very pleased," said Knowles' husband, Fred Knowles, who urged her to run for a seat on the School Committee. "This will keep Dale moving and another reason for her to keep going."
Dale Knowles — unable to walk as yet as she continues to come back from a near-fatal bout with cancer — earned 173 votes in Salisbury to 364 for Litcofsky, an electrical engineer with two children at Salisbury Elementary School. Although Salisbury PTA members individually supported Litcofsky, Knowles's 492-303 victory in Newbury, and 108-vote lead in Rowley closed the gap and took the day.
Recovering after weeks in a coma last year, Knowles was a special education teacher, hoping eventually to make it back to her classroom. But, the road to recovery is arduous and includes daily physical therapy and maintenance chemotherapy five days each month to help ensure the cancer does not return.
When her candidacy was announced, Fred Knowles was open about why he approached his wife to run for Triton School Committee office in light of her serious illness and complicated recovery. He said if Dale Knowles serves on the committee, she will put in the time needed to be vested in the state's teacher retirement program and be eligible for a pension should she not be able to return to work. Currently, she is not vested and could not collect a pension upon retirement.
From the beginning, Knowles said education and experience as a teacher would help her serve in the best interest of the school district's children. She also said she is well enough to take on the three-year term on the Triton School Committee.
Newbury also tipped the scale for Triton's Rowley incumbent representative Mary Murphy over her opponent Darlene Doucot, a former School Committee member who resigned last year and came back for another try. Both Salisbury and Rowley had given Doucot narrow victories, but Newbury sent the totals over the top, in part because of its huge turnout.
Yesterday, Salisbury saw 558 people or 10 percent of its voters to the polls, while in Newbury — where there was race for a seat on the Board of Selectmen, 1,514 voters, or almost 30 percent of voters, cast ballots.
With no contest in Salisbury's selectmen's race, incumbent Selectmen Don Beaulieu and Henry Richenburg ran to return to their current two seats on the five-member board and came in at almost a tie. With a friendly bet between them on who would earn the most votes in their mutual quest for re-election, it was Richenburg with 460 to Beaulieu's 459.
"That means I have to buy," Beaulieu said at the polls, as Richenburg stood laughing beside him.
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