An institution with an institutional memory

Mark Wolosik was the only man I knew, maybe the only person on Earth, who could rattle off the names of all 130 municipalities in Allegheny County — without looking at a map.

“And he could tell you how many polling places there were in each district, too,” Allegheny County Common Pleas Senior Judge Joseph M. James said.

Mr. Wolosik directed the county’s division of elections for 17 years. In an age where people casually and commonly knock public servants for alleged laziness ( often doing that through tweets and emails made when these critics should be working themselves), Mr. Wolosik’s work ethic was beyond reproach. And not a year into his retirement, he died unexpectedly Sunday at 65.

What Judge James liked about him was what everyone liked about him: Whether the contest was for committeeperson in Turtle Creek or county executive, he treated every election as important. “His mantra,” Judge James said, “was ‘ Let’s get it right.’”

He’d stand at the counter in the City- County Building and help first- timers running for office navigate the maze of forms they must fill out. When a dispute came to court, Mr. Wolosik never forgot a thing, said Judge James, who has handled all the election cases since 2000.

“I found him an incredible resource,” he said. “He’d say, ‘ Judge, you decided that case eight years ago when the problem was such and such.’”

Al Opsitnick was born the same year as Mr. Wolosik and, as assistant county solicitor working with the division of elections, he knew him professionally for more than 30 years. ( Mr. Wolosik began working for the Elections Division when he was still in high school.) Mr. Opsitnick said anyone could throw out a three- digit number — all the municipalities had one assigned to them — and Mr. Wolosik could say, “Oh, yeah, that’s Pittsburgh’s 7th Ward.”

He’d remember things Mr. Opsitnick could not but would never lord that over him. “He’d never say, ‘ Hey, you’re the solicitor, how you come you don’t know this?’ He could have on hundreds of occasions.

“I never recall him dressing anyone down. But he always strove for perfection. He took great pride that everything was done right.”

Some election “nights” wouldn’t end until the sun was coming up the following morning, because every polling place has a “suitcase” holding the results. Mr. Wolosik “would not leave until he had control of 100% of the suitcases.’’ Sometimes that meant sending someone in the wee hours to pick up one from a side porch in McKeesport, but Mr. Wolosik made sure that got done.

I didn’t know him well, but I knew his sense of humor, and his encyclopedic knowledge of his domain became evident some years ago, not long after I wrote about an online trivia site, Sporcle. com, that asked, “Can you name the political divisions of Allegheny County?” I was waiting in a courtroom when Mr. Wolosik walked over. Inside of a minute, it was clear he could touch ‘ em all, from Aleppo to Wilmerding.

It wasn’t all numbers with him, though. Mr. Opsitnick, who said he himself was once “a half- baked garage musician” playing bass, said Mr. Wolosik was “near studio caliber” as a guitarist. Yet he would never play in public because “he was too much of a perfectionist in everything he did.”

It’s a shame he did not have longer to enjoy the retirement he did so much to earn. He’d just bought himself a new electric piano and he was clearly enjoying his free time. After a recent visit to Mr. Opsitnick’s home in O’Hara, he said, “His parting words to my wife [ Linda Kmetz] as he was backing out of our driveway were, ‘ Retire as soon as you can.’”