Hager retires after two decades as county recorder

Friday was a bittersweet day for Sharon Gossett Hager.

After 30 years in the county recorder office, she had packed up her stuff on Thursday and, on Friday, there was a party to celebrate her retirement and her time in office.

“It’s a sad day, if my health hadn’t failed I would love to be continuing on,” Hager said. “But there comes a time, as we age, we have to let the next generation take over.”

Hager has been the county recorder since she was appointed in 2004 to replace Sue Deeds, who had hired her in 1994.

“She trained me well,” Hager said. “And I trained my staff well ,too. I am going to miss them. But I will be back in to see everyone.” 

Even as she talked to The Tribune, people stopped by to wish her luck and give her a hug. Some were from other offices in the courthouse. Some were former employees. Even her pastor stopped by to chat and pray one last time together in the office.

In 2020, Hager announced that it would be the final time she would run for office and in the last election, Lori Morris was voted in as the recorder.

“It was time,” Hager said of her decision. “I think everyone really knows when it is time for a change. I had done everything I could for this office. I have made improvements over the years. I made it a point, every term, to do something major in the office.”

One of those major things was to get every record including deeds, which go back to 1818, digitized and online.

Her favorite part of the job was being able to make a difference in people’s lives, whether it was hiring college students during summer and school breaks or helping people who were searching for deeds, mortgages or other important documents.

As for what Hager is going to do in her retirement, the running joke of the party was that now she had more time to watch her Hallmark movies.

“They are all about the same. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. But I love them,” she said, with a laugh. “But after I got sick and saw a bunch of them, even this faithful fan may have to spread her wings a little bit.”

2024 was a rough year for Hager. Around Christmas, she got COVID-19 and, after a couple of weeks, of the initial diagnosis, she got even sicker. After Aaron, her son, who lives in Westerville, couldn’t get ahold of her, he called the recorder’s office and asked them to check on her. They found her unconscious and Hager was sent to a local hospital, where she was intubated before she was sent to a specialty hospital in Columbus to get weaned off the oxygen.

She spent three months in a nursing home for rehabilitation before coming back home to Coal Grove. 

The toughest part of leaving was turning off the lights to her office after three decades in the office.

“I had 30 years of collected junk,” she said, laughing. “I had a lot of gifts people had given me over the years that I kept so I could look at it. But when I had to turn off the light for the last time, I knew it was over.”