MARK MARONEY/Sun-Gazette Former City Councilwoman J. Marlyne Whaley is all smiles as she holds one of the five street signs made in her honor that will be put on intersections along Walnut Street between Little League Boulevard and High Street by an ordinance enacted by City Council. The signs show these sections to be forever known as J. Marlyne Whaley Way.

When J. Marlyne Porter was a young woman, she and her sister, Inez, would clean homes, mostly after school.

“It was called day work,” said Vernon Porter, Marlyne’s younger brother by three years, recalling his sisters’ kindness.

“Either Marlyne or Inez would give me 25 cents or whatever every week,” he said, adding he’d then run down to the Keystone Theater or Carlton Theater to watch a matinee, most of them shoot ’em ups.

“You could get in the movie for 10 cents and a box of candy was 5 cents,” Porter said.

“We were a close-knit family,” Porter said, a week after his older sister, J. Marlyne Porter Whaley, died on Dec. 2. She was 81.

When asked, Porter, a retired city police officer, said he wanted to share the early years with his

sister, when that token quarter was a gesture that stuck with him through the decades.

In the week since her passing, those who loved her, worked with her and became acquainted with her, said she touched many lives, and became a pioneer whose voice was for those without one.

Perhaps that determination to lead and to do what is right was born out of adversity. It was the kind of toughness that one had to learn or was born with in a city segregated in the early 1940s.

She became a woman who later became the first black City Council president, serving on council from Jan. 1, 2000 to Dec. 31, 2011, and who, in the last year of her life, had a section of Walnut Street, near her Cherry Street home where she grew up as a girl and walked to the Samuel Transeu School at Park Avenue and First Avenue, named after her.

“A lot of people don’t know it but the city was segregated and there was one black teacher, Lila Fisher, and she would teach all the neighborhood kids in the lower grades,” Porter said.

The Transeau School was segregated for students in the first three grade levels, and open to blacks in the upper grades, he said. The black community lived nearby, mostly in houses on Hepburn up to Campbell streets, and from Park Avenue toward then Erie Avenue, which became Memorial Avenue.

“The school had a big room on the south end of the building and the first grade sat on the side toward the west, and second grade in the middle and third grade on the east,” Porter said. Then, when the kids got to fourth, fifth and sixth grades, the black children could be taught by white teachers, he said.

“I don’t know about Marlyne, but my own feelings — I loved it. What do you know when you are a kid?” Porter asked.

Later on, Marlyne would attend Curtin Middle School and Williamsport High School, Porter said.

Porter’s other recollection was her sister graduating from high school in 1953 and how she continued to be kind.

“I remember Marlyne was very good to me and my younger brother,” Porter said.

Her brother also recalled when Marlyne met the love of her life, the late Ronald Alva “Herc” Whaley, who worked for the city fire department for 30 years, from 1960 to 1991.

“They dated and they got married Dec. 3, 1955,” Porter said.  “Herc was great athlete at the high school.

Porter said the team Herc played for twice beat one from Reading with a player the likes of Lenny Moore on it.

Moore, a speedy halfback, went on to play for Penn State and then professional football for the Baltimore Colts and was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame. Former Williamsport coach Sam Belle said Moore never forgot that loss.

Kimberly I. Riles, a daughter, said her mother’s work ethic was shared by all in her family.

Riles remembers her mother for all she did for the family. All of the Elks Club meetings, and the food, music and building relationships between all members of the community, including the political struggles of the women’s suffrage movement and black Americans, especially when she would appear during Black History Month at the Campbell Street Community Center, now Firetree Place.

Marlyne became the kind of professional employee any business would desire, and one was fortunate to hire her.

Charles Luppert, former president of Williamsport National Bank, said his friend was an ideal employee.

“She was at the bank 20 years, most of the time as switchboard operator,” said Luppert, bank president for 33 years, and 17 as its president at the 329 Pine St. office.

“She took all types of calls, and handled them real well,” Luppert said.

After the banking years, Luppert said he and Marlyne remained friends and once-a-month would get together in a retirees group.

“About 20 of us showed up and reminisced,” Luppert said.

“Marlyne was a quite a singer,” he said. “She had a terrific voice. She was a no-nonsense person. You knew where you stood with her and she did a nice job on council.”

While in city government, Marlyne was all business, with a touch of humor.

“Marlyne served this community with common sense, candor and a refreshing sense of humor,” said former Council President Bill Hall. “She always put the needs of the people before her own,” he said.

Hall said he was honored to serve as vice president when she was council president, and misses her.

“To her family, I would like to say, Thank you for supporting her in her service to us.”

Another man who served on council with Whaley recognized her passion and devotion to bettering the city.

“Mrs. Whaley was a leader who was passionate about Williamsport, and who took seriously her role in giving voice to all members of our community,” said Patrick Marty, who served together with Whaley on council from 2006 through 2010.

“She had a keen sense of history and fully understood her remarkable place in it — and she had an enviably long, and fearsome, memory,” Marty said. “But most of all, for me, Marlyne reinforced the important notion that skepticism is a virtue, and her watchful eye and vigorous questioning made our city better.  She was tough as nails, deeply caring and always funny as all get-out.”

Another former councilman lent his feelings on his time with her.

“Marlyne cared deeply about our community and gave graciously of her time and talents,” said former Councilman J. Michael Wiley. “She spoke from her heart and she did not hesitate to call it the way she saw it,” he said. “Her decisions on council were grounded in what she believed was best for our community. She served our city well.”

On Jan. 7, 2008, Whaley moved up from council vice president to its president.

“She represented those who didn’t have a voice,” City Councilman Randall J. Allison said.

William E. Nichols Jr., city finance director and general manager of River Valley Transit, had his go-arounds with Whaley while she held the gavel. “She would of liked to have seen a city go to a manager,” he said.

“My good buddy,” said former City Councilwoman Gerry Fausnaught. “She broke down walls.” In 2011, Whaley advocated for a manager form of council, Fausnaught said. “She was not a fan of the strong mayor form of government, which began in the early 1970s under the late Williamsport Mayor John Coder.

“She was a pioneer in many ways,” Fausnaught said, adding that her own campaign in a bid to remove Mayor Gabriel J. Campana from his job, would not have gotten started had Marlyne not told Fausnaught to press forward with it in 2011.

“She was a fighter, but it was for what was right,” Fausnaught said. “She always told the truth. You either loved her or you hated her, there was not much in between.”

“Marlyne cared for the city and was a straight-shooter,” Campana said, ordering the city flag to half-staff in tribute to the former city servant.

Marlyne’s bright smile was shared with her husband and the family for a photograph beneath the street sign at Walnut Street and Memorial Avenue earlier this year.

The whole council came out that day, much to her delight.

It started to rain, but everyone’s heart was filled with sunshine that afternoon.

Toward the end, when cancer wore her down, Whaley didn’t show it, at least not publicly.

“She called twice a week wanting to know what was going on,” said Janice Frank, a friend and city clerk.

The two had lunch and shared the latest city happenings.

Even while she was weak, she wanted the powers-to-be to know she was watching them.